Paid leave in the states: Who’s covered, and who’s left out?

If you work for the state of South Carolina or Mississippi, having a baby just got a little easier. Both states recently expanded paid parental leave: South Carolina this month and Mississippi in January. The catch: the programs apply only to employees who work for the state government.

Virginia this year took a different approach. It became the first Southern state to require paid family and medical leave for nearly all workers—state and private employees, alike.

The differences in these state family and medical paid leave laws show that some states cover everyone, and others cover only their own employees and leave everyone else hoping for a generous boss.

That split decides who can afford to stay home to care for a new baby. And women feel the gap the most.

Why it Matters

Access to paid leave is a particularly salient concern for women, who comprise nearly half of the nation’s workforce and often take on the bulk of caregiving responsibilities.

A 2025 Census Bureau report looking across a long period shows that among mothers who gave birth for the first time before 1994, 39.9 percent used a form of paid leave, whereas  from 2014 to 2022, about 49 percent of first-time mothers used paid leave.

Nationally, only 27% of workers had paid family leave through their job in 2023. The odds drop to 14% for part-time workers and 19% for those who work at businesses with fewer than 50 employees. Those are exactly the jobs where many women work.

When leave is unpaid, new moms make hard trade-offs. They go back to work before their bodies have healed, cut their hours, or leave the workforce entirely. Those choices follow women for years, in their paychecks, promotions and retirement savings. Paid leave does not erase the “motherhood penalty,” but it keeps having children from being the reason a woman’s career stalls.

Background

The only federal, national family and medical leave law is the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. It protects employees’ jobs for up to 12 weeks after a birth or adoption, but it doesn’t pay a dime. The United States is the only developed nation without a national paid family leave policy to help employees take paid time off specifically to care for a newborn child.

FMLA also doesn’t reach everyone: small employers are exempt and some workers don’t meet the hours rules, so only about 56% of the workforce is eligible.

With Congress stalled on passing a federal law providing paid family and parental leave, states have stepped in.

California launched the first paid family leave program in 2004. Since then, states have gone one of two ways. Some built insurance programs, funded by small payroll deductions, that cover nearly every worker. Others, especially in the South, chose a cheaper route and gave paid leave only to their own employees, often pitched as a way to recruit and keep state workers.

Where Your State Stands

States covering private-sector and public employees (usually).
According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, 14 states plus Washington, D.C., have mandatory paid family leave laws:

• California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington and the District of Columbia

States covering state employees only.
The National Conference of State Legislatures says most states now offer some form of paid parental leave to their own workers. States with a state-employee benefit but no statewide guarantee include:

• Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee

Several of these, including South Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee, also let private employers buy paid leave insurance voluntarily. That’s an option for businesses, not a guarantee for workers.

States where private workers are covered, but state workers are not.
It sounds backward, but in California, most public employees don’t pay into the state disability fund that pays family leave benefits. They are covered only if their union negotiated to opt in.

There are new state players.
Minnesota and Delaware began paying benefits in January 2026, and Maine is rolling out its program this year. Maryland’s benefits for private employees starts in 2028, while its program for state workers began this year. Virginia’s law (SB2/HB1207) starts collecting payroll contributions on April 1, 2028, with benefits beginning in December 2028. Workers there will get up to 12 weeks at 80% of pay.

Who Gets Left Out

The biggest group left out of coverage is private-sector workers in the roughly three dozen states without a statewide program.

South Carolina’s new law, which took effect Oct. 1, is a step forward for state workers. Temporary and grant-funded employees now qualify, the non-birthing parent gets four weeks of paid leave instead of two, and parents of stillborn babies are guaranteed the full six weeks.

However, it reaches a small slice of the overall workforce. In 2024, 958 state employees used paid leave for a birth or adoption. That’s meaningful for those families, but it’s a drop in the bucket next to the state’s private workforce.

Even the state-only benefits come with fine print. Mississippi’s leave goes to the primary caregiver, and only after 12 consecutive months of full-time state service.

Part-time workers and employees at small businesses are the least likely to get paid leave from an employer. Many of them are women, and many are working hourly jobs and live paycheck to paycheck.

The bottom line: Every state is different; check with your HR department and your state laws.

Related WRDI Reporting

More states provide paid ‘Safe Leave’ for domestic violence survivors (Oct 26)

Resources

Bipartisan Policy Center - State Job-Protected Family and Medical Leave Laws
NCSL: State Family and Medical Leave Laws - State-by-state rules, including leave for state employees
KFF: Paid Family and Sick Leave in the U.S. - Who has access and who doesn’t
National Partnership for Women & Families - Research and state paid leave tracking