2024 VP Debate Fact-Check: Five Things to Know About Paid Leave in the U.S.

At the October 1, 2024, vice presidential debate, U.S. voters had the chance to hear a long-overdue conversation about paid family and medical leave—a policy with exceptionally high public support, strong small business engagement in states that have fought to win paid leave, and a track record of positive impacts for workers, families, businesses, and the economy.

Near the end of the debate, moderator Margaret Brennan asked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the Democrat, and Senator J.D. Vance, the Republican, about their plans to support families with access to paid leave and child care. Walz shared the rationale for enacting paid family and medical leave in Minnesota before reaffirming his support for a federal paid family and medical leave program. Vance failed to answer the question, instead acknowledging bipartisan interest in the issue and pivoting to cultural barriers for women who want to stay home to care for a new child.

This important debate discussion included crucial information about the benefits of paid leave, as well as common misconceptions, so here are five corrections to the record and additional facts about how paid leave programs are structured and paid for; the people and purposes they cover; how even big companies fall short; how paid leave and child care are complementary and not interchangeable; and why economic growth and tax policy won’t solve America’s paid leave chasms.

TRUTH #1: State paid family and medical leave programs and federal paid leave proposals involve creating public paid leave funds from which workers receive benefits—they are not simply unfunded mandates on businesses. Universal, comprehensive paid leave programs do not require employers to bear the full cost of leave.

Debate statement: The specific question that Ms. Brennan asked the candidates was “How long should employers be required to pay workers while they are home taking care of their newborns?” Ms. Brennan’s question, while well-intentioned, creates a misimpression about how paid leave programs are structured.

FACTS: Every state paid leave program in the U.S. and leading federal paid leave proposals envision shared public investments in paid leave rather than employer-provided benefit payments to workers who are away from work on parental, family, or extended medical leave. This means that paid leave programs help to support businesses by stabilizing the workforce, reducing turnover, attrition and the high cost of rehiring and retraining new workers, and encouraging business innovation rather than imposing significant new costs.

Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have created state paid family and medical leave programs, and most workers are provided paid family and medical leave benefits that replace a substantial share of their wages from a public fund. Employers have the option to self-insure or pay for leave on a 1:1 basis through a private plan in all but two of these jurisdictions, but most do not. To fund paid leave benefits in states, small payroll deductions are pooled to keep costs low for both workers and employers. Proposed federal legislation, the FAMILY Act, and a policy like the proposal included in the 2021 Build Back Better Act would also create a publicly-funded paid leave program—through small payroll deductions in the FAMILY Act and through U.S. Treasury funds generated from higher corporate taxes and fairer taxes on ultra-wealthy people in a proposal like the Build Back Better Act's.

TRUTH #2: Paid family and medical leave is essential for people of all genders and people with a range of care needs, not just for new moms.

Debate statement: Ms. Brennan’s question focused on parents caring for newborn babies without addressing other common and serious family and personal medical needs. Senator Vance’s answer focused on women as caregivers to children instead of acknowledging that care is also something men can and often want to do. In reality, people of all genders face a range of care needs and desires at every stage of their working lives, and current federal and employer policies fall short.

FACTS: U.S. workers’ and families’ needs for paid family and medical leave go far beyond parents of newborn babies—and Governor Walz acknowledged medical leave in the debate by referring to leave that people need for cancer, as an example.

Every state paid leave program and leading federal proposals cover new parents and the needs of family members who are caring for seriously ill, injured, or disabled loved ones. Family caregivers are a growing demographic in the United States, where there are now an estimated 53 million to over 100 million caregivers—the majority of whom hold paying jobs in addition to providing unpaid care. State programs and federal proposals also all cover workers with serious personal health conditions, and some also address military families’ unique caregiving needs and gender-based violence survivors’ need for “safe” leave.

In addition, the need for paid leave—and the desire to care for children and loved ones—isn’t limited to women. Governor Walz mentioned that he went back to work just five days after his children were born, and many men in the U.S. say that they wish they were able to care for children and loved ones but feel held back by barriers in both culture and policy. State paid leave policies have been effective levers for change. For example, in California, men now make up 44 percent of paid leave claimants, up from 17 percent when the program began in 2004.

TRUTH #3: The majority of U.S. workers—even people working for large corporations and people who are paid higher wages—do not have access to employer-provided paid family leave.

Debate statements: Before explaining why Minnesota created a statewide paid family and medical leave program, Governor Walz repeated a common misconception that paid family leave is a standard benefit in large companies. Senator Vance said that his wife, “a brilliant corporate litigator…had access to paid family leave because she worked for a bigger company,” also implying that this is a standard benefit for white-collar workers in larger companies. For the vast majority of U.S. workers in most U.S. businesses, including the largest, access to paid family leave is not a given.

FACTS: Just 41 percent of workers in companies with more than 500 workers—and 27 percent of U.S. workers overall—have paid family leave, according to an analysis of 2023 Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data. Finance and insurance is the only sector where more than a majority of workers (57 percent) had access in 2023, leaving more than four in ten workers in this industry behind. In professional services—where benefits for lawyers like Usha Vance are categorized by the BLS—just 32 percent of workers had access to paid family leave in 2023. Even only a bare majority (51 percent) of the highest-paid workers were guaranteed paid family leave through employer-based policies in 2023.

To be sure, workers in larger companies and in higher-paid, professional jobs have more access and more flexibility than workers in smaller businesses (20 percent in companies with fewer than 100 employees had paid leave at work in 2023), service industry jobs (27 percent overall, but just 7 percent in accommodations and food services), and jobs paying the lowest wages (5 percent)—but any suggestion that the need for a public paid leave program only fills a gap for workers in smaller businesses or lower-paid, service jobs is inaccurate.

TRUTH #4: Paid leave and child care are complementary policies—and U.S. infrastructure and investments fail on both—but they are not interchangeable.

Debate statement: Senator Vance’s response to Ms. Brennan’s paid leave question ended by erroneously conflating paid leave and child care with this statement: “If you look at the Federal programs that we have that support paid family leave right now, [we have] the community development block grant...that spends a lot of money from the federal government. These programs only go to one kind of childcare model.” Presumably, Vance meant to refer to the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCBDG). CCBDG has nothing to do with paid leave; it provides money to states for child care subsidies to families with low incomes so that parents can work.

FACTS: Parents with young children need both paid leave and child care. Paid leave offers income replacement and job protection during a period of weeks or months away from paid work to care for young children. Access to affordable, accessible child care helps facilitate parents returning to work and staying employed after a paid leave if they choose to do so or—like most families in two-parent and single-parent-headed households—have no other financial option but to work.

Paid leave is associated with higher workforce return, retention, and earnings over time for women, but without stable, accessible, and affordable child care, returning to work, staying employed, and advancing in a job or career can be challenging. The high cost of care and difficulty finding care are common pain points for many families. This is why bringing down the costs of child care, building a stronger and better-compensated child care workforce, and expanding access to a range of care options is so critical both for families and is a business imperative.

TRUTH #5: Universal access to paid family and medical leave requires a plan and dedicated investments—not a reliance on “economic growth” fueled by trade policy and lowering corporate tax rates. In fact, establishing paid leave could fuel economic growth and small business competitiveness.

Debate statement: Asked whether President Trump supports a $5,000 child tax credit for families, Senator Vance replied that the Trump-Vance economic plan would "Cut taxes for American workers and American families. Cut taxes for businesses that are hiring and building companies in the United States of America. But penalize companies and countries that are shipping jobs overseas,” and he hypothesized that “[w]hen we bring in this additional revenue with higher economic growth, we're going to be able to provide paid family leave, childcare options that are viable and workable for a lot of American families." Vance offered no specifics on policy design for paid leave or child care policies. Prior reliance on business-side tax credits and tax cuts to incentivize business behavior with respect to paid leave without proven results or accountability is a real concern.

FACTS: Paid leave contributes to economic growth—but, without intervention, it won’t necessarily or automatically result from it. Experience has shown that, left to the market, companies will not expand access to paid leave benefits in a way that creates universal coverage. Over the past ten years, paid leave access has grown, but growth has been slow and uneven and, as noted above, is nowhere close to universal.

Moreover, experience shows that tax cuts are not an effective way to guarantee access to paid leave to U.S. workers. The 2017 Republican tax bill included a tax credit for employers that voluntarily provide paid leave to middle- and lower-income workers, but an analysis of Internal Revenue Service data shows that this credit has not had an appreciable impact on expanding access to paid leave among workers targeted by the tax credit. Only a tiny share of firms nationwide (1,230) used the credit in 2020-2021, and nearly 90 percent of the $101 million spent went to 180 firms with over $1 billion in revenue. There is also no requirement that companies claiming the credit add a new leave benefit rather than subsidizing an existing benefit or that leave meet minimum research-backed standards for duration or wage replacement levels.

In contrast, state models—like the Minnesota program and those in 13 other U.S. jurisdictions—guarantee access for all serious family and medical needs at a livable wage replacement rate. These programs are effective investments for workers, families, businesses, and the economy that a federal program could replicate and build upon.