About Paid Leave Calc
A free, independent calculator that turns each state's paid leave law into a weekly number you can plan around — and shows exactly where that number came from.
Why this exists
When a baby is due, a parent is in hospital or a surgery is scheduled, the first practical question is money: how much will actually arrive each week, and for how long? The answer is buried in program rules that differ far more than most people expect. 15 jurisdictions now run a mandatory paid leave or disability insurance program, and they do not even agree on what “your wage” means. California looks at your best calendar quarter from roughly a year ago. New York averages your last eight weeks. Washington and Massachusetts take your two best quarters. New Jersey divides a whole base year by the weeks you earned in it. On top of that sit replacement rates that change at thresholds, weekly maximums that reset every January (or every July, in Rhode Island), waiting weeks that some programs pay back and others never do, and caps on how many weeks you can draw.
Most calculators online apply one flat percentage to every state, or quote last year’s maximum. We built this one because a wrong estimate here is not an abstraction: it decides whether a family can afford the full leave the law allows.
What we publish
- A calculator for every state with a program, using that program’s own wage definition, replacement formula, rounding rule, maximum and minimum, waiting period and duration limits.
- A week-by-week timeline so you can see the unpaid waiting week, the weeks that are paid, and the point where the program stops paying.
- Your own payroll deduction for the program, so the cost side is visible too.
- One honest page for the states with no program, explaining what federal FMLA does and does not give you there.
Who we are
Paid Leave Calc is written and maintained by the Paid Leave Calc Editorial Team, an independent publisher. We are not a government agency, an insurer, a law firm or a payroll company, and nobody pays us to send you anywhere. We do not name individual authors and we do not claim credentials we cannot show you; instead every figure on the site is linked to the statute, regulation or agency notice it came from, with the date we last checked it, so you can verify it yourself.
How the site is paid for
There is no advertising, no affiliate link, no lead form and no sponsored placement. The site loads no third-party scripts. What you type into the calculator stays in your browser; see the privacy page for the few things our server does record.
What we will not do
We do not guess. When an agency has not yet published next year’s maximum, the calculator says so and asks you for the official figure rather than projecting one. We do not decide eligibility — the agency that runs your program does — and an estimate here is not a claim decision. If your situation involves several employers, a self-employment election, a private employer plan or an appeal, use the result as a starting point and confirm it with the agency.
Corrections
If you see a number that does not match your agency’s notice or your benefit determination, please tell us. Reports go straight into our corrections queue; how we handle them is set out in the editorial policy.
Last reviewed .