A new report from Statistics Canada shows that paid sick leave (PSL) coverage remains far from a universal experience among working Canadians. “Until recently, lack of data on PSL hindered analysis of whether PSL coverage had improved or worsened in Canada over the last few decades,” the report’s researchers write. “This study fills this information gap.”
Entitled Employee paid sick leave coverage in Canada, 1995 to 2022, it found coverage increased modestly, rising just eight per cent during the study period. In many cases, they say the coverage appears to have risen faster in jobs that traditionally have low coverage relative to other jobs, including temporary workers. Differences in coverage across education levels remained stable.
Although PSL is known to reduce what researchers call “contagious presenteeism” and although the recent COVID-19 pandemic led to renewed scrutiny of PSL made available to Canadian employees, among 22 countries ranking highly in terms of economic and human development, Canada was one of only three countries with no national policy for employees who missed five days of work due to sickness. “For the vast majority of Canadians not working in federally regulated industries, short-term sick leave regulation is under provincial jurisdiction,” they write. “Studying PSL across Canada can be complex.”
As for the eight per cent increase in the number of Canadian employees saying they have PSL, they say this works out to approximately 64 per cent saying they had PSL in November 2022, compared with about 56 per cent who said the same in November 1995. For finance and insurance employees, this number rises to 86.5 per cent of those in November 2022 who said they have PSL.
“In the private sector, large firms and small firms offer PSL to markedly different degrees,” as well, they report. “About 70 per cent of employees in large firms reported having PSL coverage in 2022, twice the percentage observed in small firms.”
