Connecticut Sick Leave Law 2026: Accrual, Who's Covered

Connecticut's paid sick leave law gives most private-sector employees 1 hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours they work, up to 40 hours a year. Since January 1, 2026, it covers every employer with 11 or more employees in the state, and on January 1, 2027, it reaches employers with even one employee. You can start using what you've earned on your 120th calendar day on the job, and your employer can't make you bring a doctor's note.

From 2012 through 2024, Connecticut's sick leave only applied to "service workers" in a list of job titles at employers with 50 or more employees. Public Act 24-8, signed in May 2024, threw out the job list, sped up accrual from 1 hour per 40 worked to 1 per 30, and set a three-step phase-in by employer size. An earlier bill, Public Act 23-101, is the one that added mental health wellness days as a permitted use. If you read a summary that still mentions service workers or a 50-employee threshold, it is out of date.

Which employers have to provide it, and when

Coverage depends on how many people your employer has on payroll in Connecticut, counted once a year using the payroll for the week that contains January 1. A company with 9 Connecticut employees and 300 in New York was not covered in 2026.

Date	Employers covered	Status in October 2026
January 1, 2025	25 or more employees in Connecticut	In effect
January 1, 2026	11 or more employees in Connecticut	In effect
January 1, 2027	1 or more employees in Connecticut	Starts in under three months

For 2027 the headcount barely matters: one employee is enough. If you work for a small shop, a two-person office or a family restaurant that has told you sick leave "doesn't apply to us," that answer expires on New Year's Day. Accrual for you starts that day, or on your first day of work if you're hired later.

The statute also blocks the obvious workaround. An employer can't fire, dismiss or transfer people just to stay under a threshold.

Who is covered, and who isn't

The 2025 rewrite defines an employee simply as anyone "engaged in service to an employer in the business of the employer." Full-time, part-time, hourly, salaried: all covered. There is no minimum number of weekly hours. A part-time employee working 12 hours a week accrues sick time at the same rate as everyone else, just more slowly.

Two groups are carved out. The first is seasonal employees, defined as someone who works 120 days or less in a year. The Department of Labor's FAQ adds a detail employers miss: if a seasonal worker ends up going past 120 days, the employer has to credit accrual back to that person's first day. The second exclusion is members of construction trade unions whose employers pay into a multiemployer health plan under a collective bargaining agreement. Self-employed people aren't covered either.

How accrual works: 1 hour for every 30 worked

The accrual rate is 1 hour of paid sick leave for each 30 hours actually worked. Hours you spend on vacation, on sick leave or on unpaid leave don't count toward the 30. The law requires accrual up to 40 hours a year, where "year" is whatever 365-day period your employer uses for benefits: calendar year, fiscal year or your hire anniversary.

At full time, the cap arrives fast. Forty hours a week means 1,200 hours worked by week 30, and 1,200 divided by 30 is exactly 40 hours of sick leave. A full 2,080-hour year would work out to 69.3 hours, but only 40 are required. Employers may give more, and a PTO accrual rate above 1 per 30 is common.

Salaried workers who are exempt from overtime are presumed to work 40 hours a week for accrual purposes, so a manager logging 55 hours doesn't earn extra. If an exempt employee's normal week is shorter, say 32 hours, accrual follows the shorter week.

You can use accrued leave starting on the 120th calendar day of employment. That waiting period applies once per employer; if you leave and get rehired after already clearing it, you don't wait again. Leave is used in one-hour increments unless your employer allows smaller units. Some school employees and municipal police officers, firefighters and public works employees may instead have to use it in the increment set by their collective bargaining agreement.

The pay rate is your normal hourly wage or Connecticut's minimum wage ($16.94 an hour in 2026), whichever is higher. Overtime premiums and commissions are left out of the normal rate. If your hourly pay varies by the work you do, the law uses your average hourly wage from the pay period before the one where you take the leave. Say you worked 40 hours as a cashier at $19 and 20 hours on a forklift at $25 last pay period. That's $1,260 over 60 hours, or $21.00 an hour, so an 8-hour sick day pays $168.00.

What you can use it for

The list in section 31-57t is broader than most people expect:

Your own illness, injury or health condition, its diagnosis or treatment, or preventive care, mental or physical.
A mental health wellness day: a scheduled shift you take off to attend to your emotional and psychological well-being.
The same health reasons for a family member: spouse or registered domestic partner, child of any age, parent (including in-laws and anyone who stood in loco parentis), sibling, grandparent, grandchild, or someone whose close association is equivalent to those relationships.
A public-health closure of your workplace or of a family member's school or place of care.
A determination by a health authority, employer or doctor that you or a family member pose a risk to others because of exposure to a communicable illness, even without catching it.
When you or a family member is a victim of family violence or sexual assault: medical care, counseling, victim services, relocation or court proceedings.

The chosen-family clause and "child of any age" matter most in practice: driving an adult son to surgery is covered, and so is a mental health day with no diagnosis behind it. On the other hand, an employer may discipline someone who uses sick leave for a reason outside the list, like a ball game.

Carryover, the 40-hour use cap and leaving a job

Unused hours carry over, up to 40, into the next year. That doesn't double your usable time. The law caps use at 40 hours in any year, even when your balance is higher. If Dana uses 16 hours in 2026, she starts 2027 with 24, can accrue up to 40 more, and can still use only 40 in 2027. Employers can skip carryover entirely by front-loading at least 40 hours on the first day of the new year, or by paying out the unused balance at year end.

When you quit or are fired, unused sick leave is not paid out unless your employer's policy, contract or union agreement says it is. This is the most common surprise, and it is where sick leave differs from vacation in some states. If you're rehired later, accrual starts over from zero, though the employer can choose to restore your old balance. Transfers between Connecticut sites and a change of ownership don't wipe out what you've earned.

Notice, doctor's notes and the employer's paperwork

The 2025 rewrite deleted the old rules on advance notice and documentation. The statute now says flatly that no employer can require documentation that leave is for a permitted purpose. The Labor Department reads the law as setting no advance-notice requirement either; it expects you to give notice "as soon as practicable" under the employer's normal call-out procedure. One exception: if your employer gives you more than 40 hours, it can attach its normal attendance rules, including documentation, to the extra hours.

Your employer also can't make you find your own replacement. A shift swap is allowed only if it's voluntary and mutually agreed, and working extra hours to make up a missed shift requires both sides to agree.

Employers have three duties of their own. They must display the state's paid sick leave poster in English and Spanish where employees can see it, give each employee written notice of the policy (the statute's deadline is January 1, 2025, or the date of hire, whichever is later), and keep records of hours worked, sick leave accrued and sick leave used for three years. Remote and app-based workers get the poster by email or on the platform. The Labor Department publishes a model poster and notice.

When a PTO policy counts instead

A general paid time off bank satisfies the law if two conditions hold: the time can be used for every sick leave purpose under the same conditions (so no doctor's note and no two-week advance request for a sick day), and it accrues at least as fast as 1 hour per 30 worked. Unlimited PTO counts too. Plenty of PTO handbooks fail the first test because they were written for vacation scheduling. If yours demands a note or approval for sick days, the law wins for the first 40 hours.

If your employer doesn't follow the law

Complaints go to the Labor Department's Wage and Workplace Standards Division at (860) 263-6790. After a hearing, the commissioner can order payment for sick leave you were denied, back wages, reinstatement and restored benefits. Civil penalties are $500 per violation for retaliation and up to $100 per violation for other breaches, including bad record keeping. The Department's FAQ says the law gives no other private right of action. Retaliation covers firing, suspension, demotion and discipline for requesting or using leave, or for filing a complaint.

CT Paid Leave: how much it pays and how it differs

The names are confusingly close, but these are separate programs. Paid sick leave is time your employer pays for directly, for short absences. CT Paid Leave is a state insurance program, run by the CT Paid Leave Authority, that replaces part of your income during a longer absence: your own serious health condition, bonding with a new child, caring for a family member, military family leave, and safe leave for family violence or sexual assault. Federal employees aren't covered, and neither are most municipal workers and certified public school staff unless their union bargained to join.

	Paid sick leave	CT Paid Leave
Who pays	Your employer, at your normal rate	A state fund, financed by a 0.5% payroll deduction from employees
How much time	Up to 40 hours a year	Up to 12 weeks in a 12-month period (safe leave benefits alone are limited to 12 days), plus up to 2 more for incapacity during pregnancy
Pay	100% of your normal wage	95% of average weekly wage up to $677.60, 60% above that, capped at $1,016.40 a week in 2026
Eligibility	Covered employee after 120 days	$2,325 earned from covered employers in your highest quarter of the base period, and working for a covered employer now or within the last 12 weeks
Job protection	Yes, against retaliation	None by itself; comes from FMLA or Connecticut FMLA

The 0.5% contribution applies to wages up to the Social Security wage base, which is $184,500 in 2026, so the most you pay in a year through one employer is $922.50. With two or more jobs the combined deductions can go over that, and you can ask the Authority for a refund after year end. Dana, at $645 a week, pays about $3.23 a week, or $167.70 a year. It shows on her pay stub as a separate deduction, which is one reason her take-home pay is slightly lower than a federal and state tax calculation alone would predict. Employers withhold it and remit it quarterly; there is no employer match.

The benefit formula is where CT Paid Leave stands out. Your average weekly wage is your two highest-earning quarters in the base period added together, divided by 26 and rounded down to the whole dollar. The base period is the first four of the last five completed calendar quarters. The $677.60 threshold is 40 times the state minimum wage, and the $1,016.40 cap is 60 times it. For Dana, whose average weekly wage is $645, the benefit is 95% of $645, or $612.75 a week, close to full pay. Someone averaging $1,000 a week gets 95% of $677.60 ($643.72) plus 60% of the remaining $322.40 ($193.44), which totals $837.16. At $1,500 a week, the formula produces $1,137.16, but the cap holds the check to $1,016.40. Lower earners get the best replacement rate by design.

The two programs work side by side. A short illness is a sick leave day. A two-week recovery from surgery is a CT Paid Leave claim. Paid time off from your employer during a claim can delay or reduce CT Paid Leave payments. The Department of Labor notes that an employer can require paid sick leave to run alongside Connecticut FMLA leave, but you can choose to keep up to two weeks of paid time off. Apply for CT Paid Leave through the Authority's portal at ctpaidleave.org; your employer doesn't decide whether you qualify.

Questions

Does Connecticut sick leave apply to part-time employees?

Yes. Since January 1, 2025, the law covers any employee of a covered employer regardless of hours, so a part-timer earns 1 hour for every 30 worked like everyone else. The only workers left out are seasonal employees who work 120 days or less in a year and certain construction union members in multiemployer health plans.

Can my employer in Connecticut ask for a doctor's note for a sick day?

Not for the 40 hours the law requires. Section 31-57t says no employer can require documentation that leave is for a permitted purpose. An employer that voluntarily gives more than 40 hours can apply its usual attendance and documentation rules to the extra time, but not to the statutory 40.

Is CT Paid Leave the same as paid sick leave?

No. Paid sick leave is up to 40 hours a year paid by your employer at your normal wage. CT Paid Leave is a state insurance program funded by a 0.5% employee payroll deduction that pays up to 12 weeks of partial wage replacement, up to $1,016.40 a week in 2026, for serious health conditions, new children and family care.

Does a business with fewer than 11 employees have to give sick leave in Connecticut?

Not in 2026, unless it chooses to. From January 1, 2027, the threshold drops to one employee in the state, so nearly every private employer in Connecticut must start accruing sick leave for its workers that day. Workers hired later in 2027 start accruing on their first day.

How much does CT Paid Leave pay?

In 2026 it pays 95% of your average weekly wage up to $677.60, plus 60% of the part above that, with a cap of $1,016.40 a week. Your average weekly wage is your two highest-earning quarters in the base period added together, divided by 26 and rounded down to the whole dollar. It is a state insurance benefit, separate from the paid sick leave your employer pays.