Working moms in the five boroughs are getting a boost from New York’s landmark Paid Family Leave law — although not all New Yorkers are benefiting to the same extent, according to new data from the city health department.
New Yorkers who worked through their pregnancies became more likely to take paid time off after giving birth — and to return to the same job — after the Paid Family Leave law took effect in 2018, according to the health department findings.
But gaps in who’s taking paid leave persist. The department’s report finds that lower-income residents on Medicaid are still less likely to take any type of paid leave after giving birth than those with private insurance. Asian and white New Yorkers are also more likely to take advantage of the benefit than other racial groups, and it’s more widely used among those parents who were born in the United States.
Those disparities could have implications for maternal health, the report suggests. Researchers found that paid postpartum leave was associated with lower rates of postpartum depression and higher rates of breastfeeding and timely postpartum checkups.
New York’s Paid Family Leave law requires businesses with more than five employees to give workers up to 12 weeks off to bond with a new baby, while paying at least two-thirds of their salaries. Built-in job protections require employers to give workers the same position or a similar one when they return. Employees pay into the benefit out of their wages, and full-time employees become eligible after working at least 26 weeks.
Elizabeth Saylor is the citywide director of the Employment Law Unit at the Legal Aid Society and helped campaign for the Paid Family Leave law. She said she hopes the city does a survey to dig further into why certain groups aren’t benefiting as much from the law as well as the potential for additional education campaigns.
“With people working at small businesses or working off the books, it's less likely that their employer is offering the leave or telling them about their rights,” Saylor said.
She said she also comes across workers who aren’t getting these benefits because they’re misclassified as independent contractors.
The city’s new data brief tracks rates of paid leave among New York City residents who worked through their pregnancies and planned to return to work after giving birth. In 2022, about three-quarters of those New Yorkers took any type of paid leave after giving birth, up from two-thirds before the Paid Leave law took effect, according to the report.
The share who returned to the same job after giving birth also increased slightly, from 80% before the law took effect, to 84% in 2022.
Low-wage workers have been able to take advantage of the law, but still lag, city data shows. Among new parents on Medicaid, 58% took any amount of paid leave after giving birth in 2022, an increase from before the law took effect. But among those with private insurance, the share taking paid postpartum leave reached 84% by 2022.
Low-wage workers might be lagging because it’s hard for them to get by on just two-thirds of their pay while on leave, the city health department report suggests.
The average weekly wage paid under the law has increased in recent years, but still depends on how much each worker earns, according to the state. Weekly wages under the paid leave law are currently capped at $1,228.53.
Most racial groups in the study saw an increase in the rate of new parents taking paid postpartum leave after the law took effect, though there was no meaningful change among Latinas, the report found.
Nearly 80% of Asian and white New Yorkers who worked through pregnancy took any amount of paid postpartum leave in 2022, compared with 71% of Black New Yorkers and 63% of Latinas, according to the report.
