Odette CaplanDoes your employer in Connecticut have to give you paid sick days? The answer changed significantly in 2024: Connecticut's revised Paid Sick Leave (PSL) law, effective January 1, 2025, expanded mandatory paid sick leave from a narrow group of service workers to nearly all private-sector employees in the state. If you work in Connecticut for most private employers with 25 or more employees, you now accrue paid sick leave automatically — no separate enrollment, no waiting period beyond the first year of employment. This guide walks through who qualifies, how much leave accrues, what it can be used for, and what happens when employers don't comply.
Which Connecticut Employees Are Entitled to Paid Sick Leave?
Since January 1, 2025, Connecticut's Paid Sick Leave law under C.G.S. § 31-57s applies to employees who work for an employer with 25 or more employees in the state. The law further expands to employers with 11 or more employees on January 1, 2026.
Prior to 2025, the law applied only to "service workers" at employers with 50 or more employees — covering retail trade, food service, and similar sectors. The 2024 expansion (P.A. 24-8) dramatically widened coverage to include the vast majority of private-sector employees, regardless of industry.
Who Remains Excluded?
Some categories of workers are explicitly excluded from the Connecticut PSL mandate:
- Federal government employees (covered by separate federal frameworks)
- Employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement that provides equivalent or greater sick leave benefits
- Day laborers hired on a casual, day-to-day basis
- Domestic service employees in the employer's private residence (for employers with fewer than 25 household employees — an extremely narrow exception in practice)
Notably, independent contractors are excluded — but as discussed in the dossier's overview, workers who are misclassified as contractors when they should be employees are entitled to PSL retroactively.
The 2025 Expansion: What Changed
Before 2025, service workers were the primary covered population. The 2024 expansion adds everyone working in professional, technical, manufacturing, healthcare, and most other industries. Part-time employees who work at least 10 hours per month for a qualifying employer are covered. Seasonal workers employed for fewer than 120 days per year remain excluded.
How Much Paid Sick Leave Accrues in Connecticut?
Connecticut's PSL follows an accrual model — employees earn sick leave as they work, rather than receiving a lump grant at the start of the year.
Accrual rate: 1 hour of paid sick leave for every 40 hours worked, up to a maximum of 40 hours (5 days) per year.
Carryover: Unused PSL carries over to the next year, but employers may cap usage at 40 hours per year. This means an employee who carries over 20 hours starts the year with a 20-hour balance but can still only use 40 hours total that year.
Waiting period: New employees must wait until their 90th day of employment before using accrued sick leave. Accrual begins on day one of employment — the leave just cannot be used until day 90.
| Accrual Component | Connecticut Standard |
|---|---|
| Accrual rate | 1 hour per 40 hours worked |
| Annual cap (accrual) | 40 hours (5 days) |
| Annual cap (usage) | 40 hours (5 days) |
| Carryover | Yes — balance carries to next year |
| New employee wait | 90 days before first use |
| Carryover cap | None specified (employer may cap usage) |
Employers may provide more generous sick leave (greater accrual rate, higher cap, immediate use) — the law sets the floor, not the ceiling. Many Connecticut employers, particularly in professional services, offer 10-15 days of PTO that covers sick leave and more.
Front-loading option: Employers may choose to front-load 40 hours of PSL at the start of the year instead of using the accrual model. This eliminates the need to track accrual but requires providing the full 40 hours on January 1 (or the employee's first day of each year of employment).
What Can Employees Use Connecticut Paid Sick Leave For?
Connecticut's PSL covers a broader range of qualifying uses than many states. Under C.G.S. § 31-57s, employees may use PSL for:
Personal illness or injury: Any illness, injury, health condition, or preventive medical care for the employee — including chronic conditions, mental health conditions, and routine check-ups.
Care for a family member: The law covers an employee's child, spouse, civil union partner, parent (including step-parent and parent-in-law), grandparent, grandchild, sibling, or parent of a spouse or civil union partner. Connecticut uses a broad definition of "family member" — broader than federal FMLA.
Domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking: Employees (or their family members) who experience domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking may use PSL for medical attention, safety planning, legal proceedings, or relocation. This use does not require the employee to disclose the nature of the leave to the employer.
Public health emergency: If a public health emergency causes the closure of the employee's place of business or the employee's child's school or childcare provider.
À retenir: Employers may ask for documentation of the reason for leave only when the employee uses more than three consecutive days of PSL. Requiring documentation for single-day absences violates the statute and may constitute unlawful interference with the employee's right to use PSL.
Employer Obligations: Notice, Posting, and Record-Keeping
Notice requirements: Employers must provide written notice of PSL rights to each employee at the time of hiring and whenever the law changes materially. The CTDOL provides a model notice that satisfies this requirement. The notice must be available in the employee's primary language if it is not English, for employees who are not proficient in English.
Posting: A poster summarizing Connecticut paid sick leave rights must be displayed in a conspicuous location in every workplace. The poster is available free of charge from the CTDOL at portal.ct.gov/dol.
Record-keeping: Employers must maintain records of hours worked and PSL accrued, used, and remaining for each employee for a minimum of three years. Employees have the right to view their PSL balance in writing on each paycheck or pay stub.
Non-retaliation: An employer may not discharge, discipline, penalize, threaten, or in any other manner retaliate against an employee for exercising PSL rights — including filing a complaint with the CTDOL. Retaliation creates a separate legal claim with remedies including reinstatement, back pay, and compensatory damages.
Prohibited practices: Employers may not require an employee to find a replacement worker as a condition of using PSL. Requiring shift coverage arrangements as a precondition for sick leave is unlawful.
Consider the experience of Tricia, an HR coordinator at a mid-sized Waterbury manufacturing company. After the 2025 expansion took effect, her employer updated its time-tracking software to automatically accrue sick leave for all 80 employees — including part-timers who had never been covered before. The administrative change took less than a day to implement. The cost: about $3,200 in estimated additional sick leave usage in the first quarter. The alternative — non-compliance and a CTDOL complaint — would have exposed the company to back-pay liability, civil penalties, and reputational damage.
How CT Paid Sick Leave Interacts with CTPFML, FMLA, and PTO Policies
Connecticut's PSL does not exist in isolation — it sits alongside two other leave frameworks and most employers' existing PTO policies.
PSL and Connecticut PFML (CTPFML): CTPFML provides wage-replacement benefits for serious health conditions or family care needs of longer duration (up to 12 weeks of benefits). An employee may use PSL concurrently with CTPFML leave — PSL provides pay at full wage, while CTPFML provides wage replacement at up to 95% of earnings up to the cap. Employers may require employees to exhaust available PSL during CTPFML leave. When PSL is used concurrently, the CTPFML benefits reduce accordingly to prevent overpayment.
PSL and federal FMLA: A qualifying serious health condition under FMLA may also qualify for PSL use. Employers may (and typically should) run PSL concurrently with FMLA leave to reduce the overall absence duration. However, the 90-day waiting period for PSL use means a very new employee taking FMLA leave may not yet have access to PSL.
PSL and existing PTO policies: Employers who already provide at least 40 hours of PTO (vacation + sick time combined) per year that can be used for any reason — including illness — are deemed compliant with the PSL statute. They do not need to create a separate sick leave bank. However, if the PTO is "use it or lose it" and Connecticut's PSL accrual requires carryover, the employer must adjust the policy to comply with the carryover requirement.
What Happens When Employers Violate Connecticut Sick Leave Law?
The CTDOL investigates PSL complaints and can order:
- Payment of back sick leave wages owed
- Reinstatement (if retaliation occurred)
- Civil penalties for violations
- Posting violations carry separate fines
Employees may also file a private civil action under C.G.S. § 31-57v, recovering unpaid sick pay plus attorneys' fees. The statute of limitations for PSL claims is two years.
Most common violations identified by the CTDOL:
- Failing to cover part-time employees (most common since the 2025 expansion)
- Requiring documentation for absences shorter than three consecutive days
- Refusing to permit PSL carryover and zeroing balances at year-end
- Retaliating against employees who call in sick
Legal disclaimer: This article provides general information about Connecticut's Paid Sick Leave law. Laws change frequently — verify current thresholds and requirements at portal.ct.gov/dol or consult a Connecticut employment attorney.
Connecticut Paid Sick Leave: 3 Questions Employees Ask Most
Does a part-time employee in Connecticut get paid sick leave? Yes, starting January 1, 2025, part-time employees who work at least 10 hours per month for an employer with 25 or more employees accrue paid sick leave at the same 1-hour-per-40-hours rate as full-time employees. A part-timer working 15 hours per week accrues roughly 19 hours of PSL per year — slightly less than the 40-hour full-year maximum but still a meaningful benefit.
Can my employer deny my sick day request? An employer cannot deny a PSL request for a qualifying reason listed in the statute. However, the employer may require notice for foreseeable absences (a scheduled medical procedure, a planned family caregiver appointment) and may ask for reasonable documentation when an absence exceeds three consecutive days. Denial of leave for a qualifying reason is a violation that can be reported to the CTDOL.
What if my employer offers more than 40 hours of PTO but calls it "vacation"? If the PTO policy allows the leave to be used for illness — including without giving a reason — and it meets the accrual and carryover standards of C.G.S. § 31-57s, the employer is compliant. Many employers use a unified PTO policy to meet both vacation and sick leave obligations simultaneously. If the policy restricts use of vacation days to non-illness purposes, it does not satisfy the PSL mandate.
