How much money your company could save in California using a leave pay calculator in 2024

Using a parental leave pay calculator in 2024 can save your company some serious money. Let’s look at how.

You may have a parental leave pay policy that pays employees their regular salary or hourly wage during a parental leave. As you probably know, states like California and New York have leave pay laws that, in many circumstances, will confer partial wage replacement benefits to your employees when they are on leave.

Imagine an employee in California who makes $175,000 per year goes on paid family leave for eight weeks. You would pay that employee $26,923 during the eight weeks of parental leave.

Under California’s paid family leave law, that employee will be entitled to $1,620 in benefits per week in 2024. Your employee taking off eight weeks could receive $12,960. So, your company could save $13,584 by subtracting California’s benefit amount from what you plan to pay under your policy. If you have 20 employees going on leave in California in 2024, that’s a savings of $259,200!

Unfortunately, calculating the amount that an employee will receive from a state paid family leave program, and determining your supplemental payment amounts under your policies, is easier said than done.

Here are some aspects of the calculation that make it complicated:

• Partial weeks. You need to know how to handle payments in a week when an employee works partial weeks, such as the first and last week of leave.

• Intermittent leave. State laws usually allow employees to use their paid family leave benefits intermittently. You need to be able to calculate intermittent leave benefit amounts in order to supplement the pay correctly. 

• Weekly benefit amounts. Weekly benefit amounts can be hard to calculate. They often depend on what the employee made in total over the course of a year-long period before the leave begins, including commissions and bonuses. 

Undoubtedly, the biggest hurdle for employers is state-by-state differences in paid family leave laws. No two state paid family leave laws are the same. The laws vary when it comes to how to calculate the weekly benefit amount, who is eligible for paid family leave, and the duration of leave pay available. 

EquiLeave can help with your state-by-state leave pay calculations so your company can take advantage of state-funded paid family leave benefits in implementing your leave program. Click here to see how.