It’s true: The US is an outlier on paid parental leave

Is the U.S. an outlier when it comes to paid leave? At least one Wisconsin state lawmaker says it is.  

"The United States is an outlier, one of only about half a dozen countries, without any guarantee of paid leave for new parents and/or other health care needs," state Rep. Lisa Subeck, D-Madison, said Feb. 16 on X.

The statement was in support of a bill introduced by Democrats in the state Legislature to establish a paid family and medical leave insurance program in Wisconsin.

"With businesses across the state facing a shortage of workers, we must find ways to attract a talented and competitive workforce," Subeck said in an email to PolitiFact Wisconsin. "A comprehensive paid family and medical leave policy in Wisconsin would be a game changer for businesses, for workers, and for our families."

Let’s look at the issue of guaranteed leave for new parents — and whether the U.S. is an outlier when compared to other countries. 

The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) requires 12 weeks of unpaid leave annually for parents of newborn or newly adopted children if the parents work for a company with 50 or more employees. In 2020 the policy was extended to caregivers of sick family members.

FMLA applies only to unpaid leave. What about paid leave?

The Federal Employee Paid Leave Act of 2019 provides a paid parental leave benefit to most (but not all) civilian employees who work for the federal government. 

Also, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, 13 states and the District of Columbia have enacted mandatory paid family leave systems. An additional eight states have voluntary systems that provide paid family leave through private insurance.

Each of those, in their own ways, provides leave — but none is a national paid parental leave program.

When asked to support the statement, Subeck pointed to a The New York Times article that obtained much of its data from the World Policy Analysis Center at UCLA.

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The policy analysis notes that paid leave available to mothers includes both paid maternity leave, which is leave reserved for mothers of infants, and paid shared parental leave — which is leave available to either parent of an infant. 

It is important to note that although not required to do so, many employers provide paid leave for their employees. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 27% to 30% of workers were provided paid family leave by their employers in 2023.

There is data for paid leave reserved for mothers of infants and for shared parental leave. The policy analysis center data reflects a review of laws in place as of January 2022

In the data illustrating paid leave available to mothers of infants, only two countries — the United States and Papua New Guinea — were in the category of no paid leave. 

A more recent report, issued in January 2024 by Velocity Global, placed the U.S. firmly in the category of worldwide outlier, as one of five countries that offer no federal compensation guarantees for maternity leave. Those five countries are the United States, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau and Papua New Guinea

PolitiFact over the years has visited this topic several times: 

Jan. 20, 2015: Barack Obama says the United States is "the only advanced country on Earth" that doesn’t guarantee "paid maternity leave to our workers." Rated Mostly True.

Aug. 22, 2017: Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., says, "We’re the only developed nation in the world that doesn’t have paid maternity leave." Rated Mostly True. 

Jan. 28, 2021: Democratic Virginia state Sen. Jennifer Boysko says, ‘The United States is the only industrialized, modernized country that does not already have a paid family medical leave program in place.’" Rated True.

Subeck said, "The United States is an outlier, one of only about half a dozen countries, without any guarantee of paid leave for new parents and/or other health care needs." 

It’s accurate to say the U.S. does not have a law requiring guaranteed paid leave — though many states do, as well as many private businesses and companies. Likewise, very few countries are in the same boat. Nearly all of them have mandated paid leave programs.

We rate the statement True.