|
Article Excerpt
Paid vacation leave, holidays, and sick leave are among the most expensive benefits offered to employees in private industry. (1) They are also some of the most widespread: according to the National Compensation Survey (NCS), 78 percent of private sector workers receive paid vacation leave, 77 percent receive paid holidays, and 61 percent receive paid sick leave. (2)
In NCS parlance, an employee has access to a benefit plan if the plan is made available by the employer, regardless of whether the employee actually participates in the plan. For some benefits, such as paid vacation and paid sick leave, access and participation are interchangeable: the NCS program assumes that all employees who have access to these benefits also participate in them. For other benefits, such as outpatient prescription drug coverage, the NCS collects specific data on who participates and who does not. (3) NCS access rates for paid vacation, paid holidays, and paid sick leave have remained stable since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began publishing them in March 2003. (4)
BLS publishes annual estimates of employee benefits in private industry. These estimates include access rates for individual benefits such as vacation leave, paid sick leave, and short- and long-term disability coverage. Not included in the estimates, however, is any analysis of combinations of benefits. Because some benefits can be used interchangeably, a "use-oriented" analysis, in addition to the existing plan-oriented analysis, can yield new insights. This article introduces a use-oriented analysis of paid-leave benefits.
An examination of paid sick leave reveals the need for an analysis of combinations of benefits. According to the NCS, 61 percent of workers in private industry receive paid sick leave. (5) Although the NCS does not currently track the details of specific sick leave plans, historical data suggest that about two-thirds of these workers, or about 41 percent of all private-industry workers, are permitted to use sick leave for doctor visits. (6) This does not mean, however, that only 41 percent of private-industry workers can visit the doctor without losing pay. The NCS program reports that 37 percent of workers receive "paid personal leave"--a type of paid leave that can be used for the same purpose as paid sick leave. (For definitions of types of paid leave, see the box on page 29.) Workers who receive personal leave also are able to visit the doctor without losing pay. NCS data can be adjusted to account for some workers receiving both paid sick leave and paid personal leave; after such an adjustment, the data show that 57 percent of U.S. workers can visit the doctor without losing pay or vacation leave. (7)
This figure, 57 percent, offers an example of the value of considering benefits in combination. It highlights the fact that over half of U.S. private-industry workers can visit the doctor without losing pay--a fact that can be lost when considering the underlying benefits in isolation. (8) Other than this article, there are currently no use-oriented analyses of employee benefits in any BLS publications. (9) Viewing paid-leave benefits in combination, rather than only viewing them in isolation, is a new way for BLS to enhance the value of its data. The remainder of this article explores three specific combinations of the leave benefits surveyed in the NCS:10 1) leave benefits that can be used to pursue leisure; 2) leave benefits that can be used to attend to illness; and 3) the combination of illness benefits and short- and long-term disability benefits.
Leave combinations
In the analysis that follows, leisure leave is a combination of paid-leave benefits that can be used to pursue leisure, and illness leave is a combination of paid-leave benefits that can be used to attend to illness or injury. There is scope for disagreement about the exact composition of these groupings, because different leave benefits may have different restrictions on their use. (Typically, employees are expected to use holiday leave on specific dates; employees have more control over their use of personal leave and vacation time.) For purposes of this article, leisure leave is defined as any combination of one or more of the following: paid vacation, paid holiday leave, and paid personal leave; and illness leave is defined as any combination of one or more of the following: paid vacation, paid sick leave, paid family leave, and paid personal leave. (11) The inclusion of short-and long-term disability benefits as components of illness leave is also...
|
