It wasn’t until she contracted COVID that Torrey, a 19-year-old student who works as a community assistant on her college campus in New York, realized her job didn’t offer paid leave. After testing positive, she took time off from the job where she works primarily in the mail room, making $16 an hour.
Torrey, who has asked to use just her first name so she can speak candidly about her employment situation, says she returned to work in a mask after a week, in part due to strict attendance policies that meant she couldn’t afford to miss more classes. “I was just kind of powering through that, and I was like, I may as well go back to work and be able to get somewhat of a paycheck this month,” she tells Teen Vogue. But she was worried about getting other people sick, and returning to work “wasn't the first choice I would have made if I had the financial means to stay home.”
Torrey says she feels lucky because she also works during the summer and has some savings to fall back on, plus she has a second job. But, she notes, many of her coworkers don’t. Thinking of how access to paid leave would impact her, Torrey tells Teen Vogue, stability would be a big part of it. “Just the fact that if you do get sick, you don't have to have that fear of [not] being able to pay for basic needs that month,” she says, “and kind of an ease of mind in that respect.”
Though paid leave is a popular policy — and research overwhelmingly shows that these policies benefit public health, maternal health, overall health outcomes for workers, and increase equity and improve worker retention and productivity — the United States doesn’t guarantee workers paid sick leave or paid parental leave. (There is no federal law that provides access to paid family and medical leave, paid time off, or paid sick leave, though some states have their own paid leave laws and programs.)
“Twenty-eight million workers in the United States still lack access to even a single day of paid sick time,” says Carmen McCoy, a legal fellow with A Better Balance, a national legal advocacy organization that uses the law to help advance justice for workers.
A 2023 survey of 1,000 voters from battleground states conducted by Paid Leave for All and Lake Research Partners found that voters overwhelmingly support paid leave policies. Young workers — despite not being a demographic much considered in regard to paid family and medical leave (PFML) or paid sick time — are uniquely impacted by the need for these policies. A 2024 report from the Center for Law and Social Policy and Data for Progress found that almost two out of five workers between the ages of 18 and 29 had left a job or been fired due to lack of access to PFML. The report also outlined that a majority of voters agree that young workers should have access to PFML.
“We continue to see that paid sick leave is the top workplace benefit young adults prioritize,” says McCoy, noting that increasing access to paid sick time and paid leave isn’t just a matter of economic justice but of gender and racial justice as well.
According to A Better Balance, young people of color disproportionately lack access to PFML, and would especially benefit from access to these policies. Paid family and medical leave, McCoy explains, refers to longer-term leave taken in increments of weeks or months, giving workers the right to receive wage replacement when they need extended time off for their own health needs, caregiving, or bonding with a new child. Then, she continues, there’s paid sick time, which refers to a worker taking time off for shorter-term needs. Paid sick time is accrued over time, meaning workers are earning paid sick leave as they are working.
There’s an important distinction between this and the Federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA): This act provides 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave to recover from a serious health condition, to care for a new baby, or to care for a loved one. But for workers who cannot afford to take that time off or for young workers, including those in part-time positions who may not qualify for FMLA, it’s not enough, says McCoy: “There's a strong fear of financial ruin if you take this time that you desperately need but you're not getting any income.”
Including young workers in advocating for the need for paid leave means deepening the understanding of who young workers are. “A lot of people assume young workers are grateful for any job that they have, and don't really think of young workers as deserving of good, high-quality jobs that have policies like paying the employee [for] time off or paid family leave,” says Kathy Tran, former senior policy analyst on the youth team at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) and currently the power-building strategist at the National Collaborative for Transformative Youth Policy.
CLASP was approached by A Better Balance to collaborate on research focused on paid leave and young workers. Young workers they interviewed, says Tran, had a wide variety of circumstances and needs, underscoring the importance of including young people in advocacy spaces that tend to focus on adults.
“When people view workers, they view adults; they do not view a 17-year-old who is having a kid and working a job,” Tran says, adding that young workers often have significant responsibilities beyond caring for themselves. Many are parents, caregivers, or have their own health needs to tend to. There are over 3 million Gen Z caregivers, McCoy says, and young workers ages 18 to 34 have some of the lowest rates of access to leave for their own medical care or the medical care of a family member.
Tran tells Teen Vogue that young workers expressed wanting more face-to-face time with human resources and supervisors to talk through what rights they do have. For example, Tran explains, “many people who worked at a department store talked about how they had to call off time unpaid, and sometimes were fired afterwards for calling out sick or just taking a lot of time off. They didn’t know what rights they had because no one ever really sat down and walked them through it.”
Ashley, a 25-year-old who works in the automotive-finance industry, who is using a pseudonym here to speak freely about work, says paid leave is something she looks at before onboarding for a job. Ashley also spoke with A Better Balance and CLASP for focus interviews about the need for paid leave, especially among youth workers. Ashley had access to PFML when she gave birth to her child but had to read the handbook repeatedly, she says, to gain clarity on some of the policies. She pointed out to a supervisor that she thought she had access to a parental bonding-time benefit the company offered, but wasn’t sure; it turned out she did have an additional month of leave that could be used before her child’s first birthday.
Ashley, who has a chronic illness, also emphasizes the importance of paid sick leave, which she uses to go to doctor’s appointments to get her medication covered and to take her child to check-ups and physical therapy. “Having access to that sick time is essential,” she says. “I don't think I'd be able to keep my job and be able to do that.”
For Ashley, having access to paid leave means being able to care for herself and her family while staying attached to the workforce. “I'm having to tell myself, It's okay to have both,” she says. “It's okay to want to be active in my son's life, but it's also okay for me to want to progress in my career. Having access to paid leave lets me know that I'm okay to do that.”
As the fight for paid leave continues, McCoy says, ensuring that people know these policies exist, and that there is national effort regarding them, is important. If you have no experience accessing these policies, it’s a difficult thing to do on your own, McCoy adds, but employment handbooks often outline policies on PFML and paid sick leave.
Contacting your manager or human resources department about how to request paid leave can be a good place to start, McCoy says, pointing out, too, that some employers offer additional benefits that go above state requirements.
If a worker wants to know more about their rights or which state laws might have additional protections, McCoy recommends A Better Balance’s Workplace Rights Hub, which can be searched by state, and the group's free and confidential helpline.
“Every single worker is going to experience a need to take leave or to have sick time," says McCoy. "Everyone gets sick. Everyone has different versions of their own family. Everyone is susceptible to longer-term illness. Paid family medical leave, paid sick time — it gives autonomy back to workers, and recognizes the humanity and basic needs that exist within every workforce.”
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