Why Do Eligible Workers Still Not Use Paid Family Leave?

New Jersey implemented paid family leave (PFL) in 2009, called the Family Leave Insurance program, and expanded it 10 years later to increase wage replacement rates, lengthen leave duration, and broaden eligibility. In 2026, additional amendments expanded access to employees of private employers with 15 or more employees, decreasing the minimum number of employees from 30. Yet still today, many eligible workers do not use PFL benefits. Understanding why individuals do not take up PFL benefits when they are available is critical for developing effective PFL policies that work for employees and employers.

Research suggests that a combination of informational, financial, and workplace obstacles prevent employees from taking up paid leave benefits. In states with PFL programs, many workers do not know the benefits exist or are unsure whether they qualify. In New Jersey, only about half of workers said they were aware of the Family Leave Insurance program between 2020 and 2022. Workers in unstable jobs or high-turnover industries in particular may receive limited information from employers. Navigating application systems can be difficult during an already stressful period surrounding childbirth or caregiving and administrative complexity in assessing eligibility, signing up, and receiving benefits may discourage participation.

Affordability also remains an important challenge. Although paid leave replaces part of a worker’s wages, for many families, particularly lower-wage earners, it is difficult to absorb even a temporary reduction in income. For example, some state programs set wage replacement at 60% but for a worker earning $10 per hour, the rate they would receive while on leave would be $6 an hour, much less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25.

Another important issue is that PFL policies do not necessarily confer job protection. In states like New Jersey, job protection is a separate program, which has different eligibility than PFL. Some workers may technically qualify for wage replacement through the state PFL program but still worry about retaliation, lost hours, reduced promotion opportunities, or even losing their job altogether. In some occupations, taking leave may be viewed as burdening coworkers or signaling lower commitment to the job.

In this blog, we explored reasons for not taking up family leave using data from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS). Twelve states collected information about paid and unpaid leave taken after childbirth between 2016-2022. In two of those states, mandatory paid leave policies were enacted (in New York in 2018 and Massachusetts in 2021). We examined type of leave taken and reasons for not taking leave in states with policies compared to states without policies. The table below shows the results.

We found that when state PFL policies were in effect, women were much more likely to take paid leave only (60.4% vs 33.8%), and less likely to take unpaid or a combination of paid and unpaid leave. When we examined reasons affecting women’s decisions about taking leave or the duration of leave, we found when state PFL policies were in effect, women were less likely to say they could not afford to take leave, that their job does not have paid leave, or that they had not built up enough leave time. However, they were equally likely to say they were afraid of losing their job, that they had too much work to do, and that their job does not offer a flexible schedule, reflecting the lack of job protection as well as workplace culture barriers that remain even in states with PFL policies. These results align with a report of New Jersey’s family leave and sick leave programs conducted by the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development and the Rutgers Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, which found that concerns about job loss were a major reason for not taking up PFL.

Table: Type of leave taken and reasons affecting decision on leave taking, PRAMS 2016-2022 (n=42,363)

Notes: Respondents could pick as many reasons affecting leave taking as they wanted. Counts are raw, percentages are survey-weighted. States with FPL policies in place include New York (NY and NYC sites) from 2018-2022 and Massachusetts from 2021-2022. States without policies during study period are Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, and Wisconsin.