- Americans are being offered more vacation time, as well as sick and family leave
- A gap has emerged between the hours they are paid and the hours they work
- Last decade, 12 percent of workers were offered family leave; this year it was 27 percent
As American workers receive more and more paid leave, there has been a widening gap between how much they get paid to work and how much they actually work.
The share of U.S. workers receiving sick leave about a decade ago was about 67 percent. But earlier this year it was closer to 80 percent.
And the share of family leave offered more than doubled from about 12 percent to 27 percent, according to Department of Labor Statistics data analyzed by the Atlanta Federal Reserve.
Economists at the Atlanta Fed analyzed the weekly number of hours employees were hired to work and compared them to the time they actually worked.
Ten years ago, in 2013, the percentage of U.S. workers offered sick leave was about 67 percent
The gap between hours paid and hours worked has widened over the past 15 years, according to Department of Labor Statistics data compiled by the Atlanta Federal Reserve.
That analysis showed that the gap between paid and worked hours has increased over the past fifteen years.
For example, while paid hours have remained fairly stable (about 34.5), the average number of hours worked per week was 33.7 in 2006, 33.5 in 2015 and 32.8 in 2023.
It means that the gap between the average number of hours paid and the average number of hours worked has increased by almost an hour per week since 2006.
According to the Atlanta Fed, this trend is driven by the increase in paid leave offered by American companies.
And during the pandemic, there was a major decline in hours worked, while paid hours increased slightly.
Between 2020 and 2021, they rose by about half an hour per week as employers in various industries required their staff to work longer hours to compensate for the lack of workers.
In 2013, about 74 percent of workers were offered vacation days, but a decade later that rose to 77 percent, according to Labor Bureau data.
According to the National Compensation Survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of private sector workers with access to paid leave has increased over the past decade
But as labor shortages eased, the hours workers were paid to work also began returning to pre-pandemic levels.
“Hours worked varied widely at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with average hours worked declining while average paid increased,” the Atlanta Fed report said.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, absenteeism from work due to illness, childcare issues, family responsibilities and other reasons not attributable to vacation/holidays has increased dramatically,” it added.
According to the National Compensation Survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of private sector workers with access to paid leave has increased significantly since 2015.