FMLA Eligibility Requirements: Who Qualifies in 2026

Who is eligible for FMLA leave?

An employee is eligible for FMLA leave when three conditions are met on the day the leave starts. First, the employer is covered: a private employer with 50 or more employees in 20 or more workweeks of the current or previous calendar year, or any public agency or school. Second, the employee has worked for that employer for at least 12 months, which need not be consecutive, though employment before a break of seven years or more usually does not count. Third, the employee has actually worked at least 1,250 hours in the 12 months immediately before the leave, which is about 24 hours a week; paid time off, holidays, and sick days do not count as hours worked. The employee must also work at a site where the employer has 50 employees within 75 miles. Meeting all three does not yet approve the leave: the reason must also qualify, most often a serious health condition as defined in 29 CFR 825.113. Source: 29 CFR 825.110.

Is my employer covered by FMLA?

The first test is about the employer, not about you. A private employer is covered when it employed 50 or more people on each working day during 20 or more calendar workweeks in the current or the preceding calendar year. Part-time employees count, employees on leave count as long as they are on the payroll, and once an employer crosses the line it stays covered for the rest of that year and all of the next, even if headcount drops. Public agencies, whether federal, state, or local, are covered regardless of size, and so are public and private elementary and secondary schools.

Two wrinkles catch employees at smaller companies. Separate companies under common ownership can be treated as one integrated employer when they share management, operations, and HR control, which pulls a 30-person subsidiary into coverage through its 200-person parent. And staffing arrangements create joint employers: a temp placed with a client is counted by both the agency and the client, with the agency usually responsible for the notices and the client responsible for taking the person back.

Coverage does not make every employee eligible. A covered employer still checks the next two tests for each person, and it must post the FMLA rights poster (WH-1420) and answer a leave request with an eligibility notice within five business days, even when the answer is no.

What does 12 months of employment mean?

The 12 months do not have to be continuous. The rule counts any 52 weeks in which you were on the payroll, and a week counts as a full week even if you worked one day of it. Someone who worked eight months, left for a year, and came back for four months has 12 months for FMLA purposes. The exception is a gap of seven years or more: employment before such a break is not counted, unless the break was for military service or the employer made a written commitment to rehire.

Time on the payroll while not working also counts toward the 12 months. Paid vacation, an unpaid leave of absence the employer approved, and time on FMLA leave itself all extend tenure, because the test is about the employment relationship, not about hours. Hours are the next test's problem.

The 12 months are measured as of the date the leave begins, not the date it is requested. An employee hired on November 3 who asks in September for leave starting November 10 will be eligible on that first day of leave, and the employer should treat the request accordingly rather than denying it for the tenure it lacks in September.

How are the 1,250 hours counted?

The second test is the one that trips up part-time employees, and it is stricter than it looks. Only hours actually worked count, using the same principles the Fair Labor Standards Act uses for overtime. Paid vacation, paid sick days, holidays, jury duty, and previous FMLA leave are not hours worked, so an employee who was on the payroll all year but took three months of unpaid leave may fall short even on a full-time schedule. Hours that would have been worked but for military service are credited, because USERRA requires it.

Take Maria, a dental hygienist who works four eight-hour days a week, 32 hours. Over 52 weeks she works 1,664 hours, comfortably over the line, and she has been at the practice for three years, so she clears the first two tests. Her colleague Tom works two ten-hour days a week, 20 hours. His 1,040 hours a year leave him 210 short, and no amount of tenure fixes that. Five years in, he is still not eligible, and he will not be until his schedule changes. A 24-hour schedule, often quoted as the threshold, is actually a hair under it: 24 hours times 52 weeks is 1,248.

For salaried employees who do not track time, the burden is on the employer. If there are no records, the employer must prove the employee did not work 1,250 hours, which is hard to do, so exempt employees are in practice presumed to meet the test. Hourly and part-time employees should ask HR for the count if a request is denied on this ground; the employer must be able to show its arithmetic.

What is the 50 employees within 75 miles rule?

The third test protects small outposts of large companies from being unable to cover an absence. Even at a covered employer, you are eligible only if the employer has 50 employees within 75 miles of your worksite, measured by surface miles on public roads, counted on the day you give notice. A regional sales office with 12 people, 200 miles from the nearest other site of a 5,000-person company, does not qualify its employees for FMLA leave.

Remote and field employees are assigned to the site they report to or from which their assignments come, not to their home. A fully remote developer whose manager and team sit in a 300-person headquarters counts as working at that headquarters and is eligible. A traveling technician dispatched from a 20-person depot is measured from the depot. This is the test most likely to change when a company reorganizes, so it is worth re-checking when a request is made rather than relying on last year's answer.

What conditions qualify for FMLA leave?

Eligibility gets you to the door; the reason gets you through it. The FMLA qualifies six reasons: the birth of a child and bonding, adoption or foster placement, your own serious health condition, care for a spouse, child, or parent with a serious health condition, a qualifying exigency arising from a family member's military duty, and care for a covered servicemember with a serious injury or illness. The phrase that decides most cases is serious health condition, and the regulations define it in several ways, any one of which is enough.

A common cold, the flu without complications, an upset stomach, or a routine dental or orthodontic problem does not qualify on its own. The same illness does qualify when it meets one of the definitions, for example flu that puts someone in the hospital or a dental problem that becomes an infection requiring three days of incapacity and two visits. Mental health conditions are judged by the same tests as physical ones, and substance abuse qualifies when the leave is for treatment by a provider rather than because of the use itself.

• Inpatient care: an overnight stay in a hospital, hospice, or residential medical facility, plus any period of incapacity or treatment connected to it (29 CFR 825.114).
• Incapacity of more than three consecutive full calendar days plus continuing treatment: either two in-person visits within 30 days, the first within seven days, or one visit within seven days that leads to a regimen such as prescription medication or physical therapy (29 CFR 825.115(a)).
• Pregnancy and prenatal care, including morning sickness and prenatal appointments, without any three-day minimum (825.115(b)).
• A chronic condition that requires at least two provider visits a year and causes episodic incapacity, such as asthma, diabetes, epilepsy, or a treated anxiety disorder (825.115(c)).
• A permanent or long-term condition for which treatment may not be effective, such as Alzheimer's disease, a severe stroke, or terminal illness, where the person is under a provider's continuing supervision (825.115(d)).
• Multiple treatments for restorative surgery after an injury, or for a condition that would cause three days of incapacity if untreated, such as chemotherapy, dialysis, or radiation (825.115(e)).

When is eligibility checked, and what if I am not eligible?

The employer determines eligibility when the leave starts and must tell you in writing within five business days of learning that leave might be FMLA-qualifying, on the eligibility notice, stating at least one reason if the answer is no. For intermittent leave taken for the same reason, eligibility is checked once at the first absence in each 12-month leave year rather than at every episode, so a person who qualifies in March stays qualified for that condition through the rest of that leave year even if their hours dip.

Falling short of one test is not the end of the road. Thirteen jurisdictions run paid family and medical leave programs in 2026, and most of them have no 50-employee threshold and much shorter service requirements, so an employee who is not FMLA-eligible can often still be paid, and in several states also job-protected, under state law. California's CFRA covers employers with five or more employees; Oregon's OFLA starts at 25. The Americans with Disabilities Act can require extended leave as a reasonable accommodation at employers with 15 or more employees when the condition is a disability. And many employers grant leave under their own policy to people the FMLA does not reach. The leave of absence hub in this cluster maps those alternatives.