The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) gives eligible employees the right to take job-protected, unpaid leave to bond with a new child, care for a family member or military service member, or for one’s own serious illness for up to 12 weeks in a year. About 60 million private sector...

The Family and Medical Leave Act provides job-protected, unpaid leave to employees in firms with 50 or more employees. However, coverage and eligibility restrictions result in 49.3 million employees (44.1 percent) in the private sector being ineligible for leave in 2012. This paper looks at...

The United States is the only high-income country that does not mandate paid family and medical leave. Instead American workers rely on a patchwork of employer-provided benefits, private insurance, state programs, public assistance, and savings to make ends meet during a leave event. About 30...

Most of the discussion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has focused on the extent to which it has extended health insurance coverage to the formerly uninsured. This is certainly an important aspect of the law. However by allowing people to buy insurance through the exchanges and extending...

This report examines the parental leave policies in 21 high-income nations and identifies five "best practices" for parental leave policies. The study shows that the U.S. has the least generous leave policies of the 21 countries examined in the report. The states exhibiting the five best...

Opponents of the ACA have labeled the health care bill a jobs killer. It seems implausible that the bill could be expected to have much impact on employment except among the relatively small number of firms that are near the 50-worker cutoff. However the bill does provide a clear incentive to...

Economists are increasingly coming to the recognition that the current downturn is likely to be longer and more severe than they had expected at the time the last stimulus package was approved in February. As a result, there is likely to be interest in additional stimulus in order to boost the...

The unemployment rate is expected to average 10.2 percent for 2010, 9.1 percent for 2011, and 7.3 percent for 2012. With this in mind, this Issue Brief describes a job sharing tax credit, designed to provide a quick and substantial boost to the economy. It would use tax dollars to pay firms to...

Since the end of the 1970s, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in economic inequality. While the United States has long been among the most unequal of the world’s rich economies, the economic and social upheaval that began in the 1970s was a striking departure from the movement...

This testimony was prepared for the House Committee on Education and Labor hearing, “Standing with Public Servants: Protecting the Right to Organize,” regarding the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act and the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, which took place in June 2019....