Paid Family Leave Explained: How PFML Works in the States That Pay (2026)

What is paid family leave?

Paid family leave (PFL), or paid family and medical leave (PFML) where the program also covers your own health, is a state-run insurance benefit that replaces part of your wages while you are off work to bond with a new child, care for a seriously ill family member, or, in the medical version, recover from your own serious health condition. It is funded by payroll contributions from employees, employers, or both, and paid by a state agency or an approved private plan rather than by your employer. As of 2026, thirteen jurisdictions pay benefits: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington. Maryland starts paying in January 2028 and Virginia in December 2028. Most programs pay 12 weeks per reason, replace a higher share of wages for lower earners, and cap the weekly benefit at or near the state average weekly wage. There is no federal paid family leave; the federal FMLA protects the job but pays nothing.

Which states have paid family and medical leave?

The paying list has grown from one state to thirteen jurisdictions in twenty years, and the shape of the programs has changed along the way. California started in 2004 by bolting family leave onto its existing disability insurance, so Californians draw own-health pay from SDI and bonding or caregiving pay from PFL. New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island followed the same disability-first pattern, which is why those four states appear in both the paid leave and the disability columns of our state grid. Washington in 2020 was the first to build a standalone program that covers medical and family leave in one fund, and every program since (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon, Colorado, Minnesota, Delaware, Maine) has copied that design.

The table lists the programs by benefit start, the maximum weeks for a single reason, and how the weekly benefit is calculated. The percentages describe the formula; the dollar caps that sit on top of them are reset each January and belong on the individual state pages, which we link from the grid as they publish.

How is paid family leave funded?

Every program is social insurance: a small percentage of wages goes into a state fund, and the fund pays claims. The percentage is set by statute or recalculated each year, and the split between employer and employee is the main design choice states make differently. California, New Jersey's family leave, New York, and Rhode Island are funded entirely by employee payroll deductions. Washington, Massachusetts, Oregon, Colorado, Minnesota, Delaware, and Maine split the premium, typically with the employee paying roughly half to three-fifths, and most of them exempt small employers from the employer share while still requiring the employee share to be collected. The District of Columbia is the outlier in the other direction: the program is funded by an employer-only payroll tax, and nothing is deducted from employees.

Employers with an existing generous benefit can usually apply to run a private plan instead of paying into the state fund, on condition that the plan matches or exceeds the state benefit on every term and is approved by the agency. Large employers with self-insured disability plans often go this route; the employee experience is the same benefit paid by a different check. Whichever route the employer takes, the wage-replacement money never comes from the employer's operating budget the way a company parental leave policy does. That is the structural difference between a state program and an employer policy, and it is why the programs can cover a 3-person business and a 30,000-person one on identical terms.

How much does paid family leave pay?

Most of the newer programs use a progressive formula with two or three bands, so lower earners get a higher share of their wages replaced than higher earners. The pattern that Washington introduced and Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine, and Minnesota adopted runs like this: up to half the state average weekly wage, the benefit replaces 80 or 90 percent of your own average weekly wage; above that line, it replaces 50 to 66 percent of the rest; and the total is capped, usually at or just below the state average weekly wage itself. The older disability-based programs use a flat percentage instead: New York pays 67 percent, New Jersey 85 percent, California 70 or 90 percent depending on your income band, each with its own cap.

Take an illustrative state whose average weekly wage is $1,600 and whose formula is 90 percent up to half that figure and 50 percent above it, capped at $1,600. Priya earns $1,000 a week. The first $800 of her wage is replaced at 90 percent, which is $720; the remaining $200 at 50 percent, which is $100; her weekly benefit is $820, or 82 percent of her pay. Her colleague Tom earns $3,000 a week: $720 on the first $800, plus $1,100 on the remaining $2,200, which is $1,820, but the cap cuts that to $1,600, or 53 percent of his pay. The formula is deliberately built so that the person who can least afford unpaid leave loses the smallest share. Once we publish the paid leave calculator you will be able to run your own wage through each state's current figures; until then, the agency for your state publishes the year's cap every autumn.

Who is eligible for paid family leave?

Eligibility is where state programs differ most sharply from the federal FMLA, and mostly in the employee's favor. The FMLA asks three questions: has your employer 50 or more employees, have you worked there 12 months, and have you worked 1,250 hours in the last year. The state programs instead ask whether you have earned enough in covered wages during a base period, typically the first four of the last five completed quarters, and the thresholds are low: a few thousand dollars over the year in most states, or a minimum number of hours (820 in Washington). Very few programs have an employer-size threshold at all, and where one exists it usually limits the employer's contribution duty rather than the employee's benefit. Delaware is the notable exception, covering employers with 10 or more staff and asking for a year and 1,250 hours of service, which mirrors the FMLA.

Because the test is earnings rather than tenure with one employer, people the FMLA misses are often covered: part-timers, workers at small companies, people who changed jobs six months ago, and in several states the self-employed, who can opt in. The flip side is that state programs are portable insurance, not employment rights. Whether your job is held while you take the benefit depends on either the FMLA, a state leave act, or a job-protection clause in the paid leave law itself. Most of the newer programs include one, usually after 90 or 180 days with the employer; the older disability-based programs generally rely on the FMLA or a separate state statute. The FMLA vs PFML guide walks through the four combinations.

Is paid family leave the same as FMLA?

No, and mixing them up causes most of the confusion in this area. The FMLA is a federal employment right: it guarantees eligible employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave and a job to come back to, and it pays nothing. Paid family leave is a state insurance benefit: it pays a share of wages and, depending on the state, may or may not hold your job. When the same absence qualifies under both, they run at the same time, the state pays while the FMLA protects, and the employer designates both from the same start date. When only one applies, you get whichever one you qualify for, which is why a new parent at a 20-person company in Oregon is paid but not FMLA-protected, and a new parent at a 200-person company in Texas is protected but not paid.

The two systems also disagree on who counts as family. The FMLA covers a spouse, parent, and child. Every state program covers at least those and most add siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, parents-in-law, and domestic partners; several (Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota) extend to any person with whom you have a relationship equivalent to family. That means an absence to care for a grandmother can be paid under state law and outside the FMLA entirely, which affects whether your job is held and whether the employer may count the weeks against your federal entitlement.

What if my state has no paid family leave?

In 36 jurisdictions there is no state benefit to claim in 2026, and the answer depends on what your employer offers. Nine of those states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Vermont) have passed laws allowing insurers to sell paid family leave policies, and New Hampshire and Vermont run a state-sponsored version with a partner insurer, but the policy only exists if your employer bought one. Nothing is deducted from your pay and nothing is owed to you by default. Ask HR whether the company holds a group family leave policy; if it does, the terms are in the certificate, usually six weeks at 60 percent of wages in the state-sponsored plans.

Without a state program or a purchased policy, the pay layer is built from what already exists. Short-term disability insurance covers your own medical condition, including childbirth recovery, if your employer offers it; the Bureau of Labor Statistics found 45 percent of private-industry workers had access to an employer-supported plan in March 2024. Company parental leave policies cover bonding for the 27 percent of private workers whose employer offers paid family leave as a distinct benefit. Accrued PTO and sick leave fill the gaps at full pay until the balance runs out. For caring for a relative, which no disability plan covers, the honest answer in a no-program state is that the leave is unpaid unless the employer chooses otherwise. Our is-FMLA-paid guide lays out the five sources and how they stack.

How do employers handle paid family leave?

For an employer in a program state the work falls into three parts. Payroll withholds the employee share (and remits the employer share where one is due) every quarter, exactly like unemployment insurance, and the rate change each January has to land in the payroll system. When an employee gives notice of a qualifying event, the employer has to hand over the program notice within the statutory window, confirm the employee's wages and dates to the agency when asked, and decide whether the same absence is also FMLA leave, in which case both designations start on the same day. And while the employee is out, the employer tracks the entitlement, keeps health insurance running where the law requires it, and plans the return.

The pay coordination is where policies need a sentence or two. Most programs let the employee top up the state benefit with accrued PTO to reach full pay, and several have an unpaid waiting week at the start that PTO can fill. What an employer cannot do in most states is require the employee to exhaust PTO instead of claiming the state benefit, or count the paid leave weeks against a no-fault attendance policy. A leave record that shows the state weeks, the FMLA weeks, and the PTO hours side by side is the simplest way to keep those rules straight, and it is what the case view in Time-Out Zone is built to show.