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2024 CA Paid Sick Leave Updates

We have some new updates for California Paid Sick Leave for 2024! Seems like a trend every year. Last year, California updated the definition of a family member to include a “designated person”. This means an employee can use paid sick leave for any person who has a family-like relationship to the employee, even if they are not related by blood.

This year, the update comes to the amount of paid sick leave required for all employers in the state of California.

Here are the updates effective January 1, 2024:

  • Employees will now be able to use 40 hours or 5 days of paid sick leave per 12-month period (calendar year, anniversary year, or other specified by the employer). Previously, employers were only required to provide 24 hours or 3 days of paid sick leave, unless they were in a city with different requirements.
  • Employees must be able to accrue 80 hours or 10 days of paid sick leave per 12-month period.
  • Employees must be able to carry over up to 40 hours or 5 days of unused sick hours each 12-month period.

Here’s what’s not changing:

  • Employees can begin using paid sick leave after 90 days of employment.
  • If on an accrual basis, employees accrue 1 hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked.
  • If on a frontload basis, the entire amount of paid sick leave must be available as of the first day of employment or as of the start of the new 12-month period (though use can still begin after 90 days of employment).
  • The amount of paid sick leave in an employee’s bank must be shown on the employee’s pay stub.
  • Employees may choose how many paid sick leave hours they use for a shift, up to their normal scheduled hours. For example, an employee who is scheduled to work 10 hours may use up to 10 hours of paid sick leave for that shift or can choose to use less than 10 hours.

Now this may not be a big change for your business if you are located in any of the seven cities with their own paid sick leave laws: Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Monica, Emeryville, City of Los Angeles, and San Diego. These cities already required employers, based on size, to provide 40 hours or more per 12-month period. However, if you have employees who work alternative work schedules in any of those cities, we recommend you reach out to TPHR to learn more about how the 2024 paid sick leave updates will affect those employees!

We recommend you review your Paid Sick Leave and/or Paid Time Off policies to ensure they will be compliant with the updates for the new year!