The 2026 BLS paid-leave figure is not an employer benchmark

If the decision is whether an employer’s paid-leave offer is ahead of the market, the latest federal benchmark cannot answer it.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 49% of private-industry workers had access to paid family and medical leave in March 2026. Access among state and local government workers was 57%.

Those estimates are useful measures of access under a new, broader benefit category. They are not measures of voluntary employer funding. Nor does the private-industry figure show that employer provision increased by 22 percentage points from the 27% BLS reported for paid family leave in 2023.

The underlying definition changed too much for that comparison. BLS now includes plans regardless of state or local mandates, and the published data do not separate mandated coverage from voluntary employer provision.