Employee paid sick leave coverage in Canada, 1995 to 2022

Until recently, lack of data on paid sick leave (PSL) hindered analyses of whether employee PSL coverage had improved or worsened in Canada over the last few decades, an important limitation highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study fills this information gap. Using the 1995 Survey of Work Arrangements and the Labour Force Survey from 2020 to 2022, this study documents the evolution of employee PSL coverage in Canada from 1995 to 2022. The study shows that self-reported PSL coverage increased moderately from 1995 to 2022. In many cases, coverage appears to have risen faster in jobs that traditionally exhibit relatively low coverage than in other jobs. Nevertheless, large differences in self-reported coverage remained in 2022 across several dimensions such as education, industry, firm size and deciles of the wage distribution. The study also shows that for many front-line workers—such as those employed in grocery stores, gasoline stations, child day-care services, and nursing and residential care facilities—PSL coverage still appears to be far from universal.