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Fast Facts on Paid Sick Days

• Forty percent of private-sector workers, including seventy percent of low-wage workers, have no paid sick days. Nearly two-thirds of restaurant workers have reported cooking or serving food while sick.

• A recent study from the University of Arizona showed that within four hours of a sick employee coming to work with a flu-like virus, more than 50 percent of office surfaces were contaminated with the virus.

• Illness costs our national economy $226 billion annually in lost productivity.  The vast majority of this cost—71 percent—is due to “presenteeism,” the practice of sick workers coming to work and infecting their colleagues rather than staying at home.

• In a 2010 University of Chicago survey, one in eight workers reported that they or a family member had been fired, suspended, written up or penalized—just for taking time off due to personal or family illness.

• A 2012 study found that a lack of workplace policies like paid sick days contributed to an additional 5 million cases of influenza-like illness during the H1N1 pandemic of 2009.

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