MN Paid Leave Law

In two months, Minnesota’s Paid Leave Program will go live. Originally passed in 2023 as Minnesota Paid Family Medical Leave (now branded simply as Minnesota Paid Leave), this program will help countless workers in Minnesota afford the time to care for themselves and/or a family member. Minnesota’s unions and community partners, including AFSCME Council 5, strongly advocated for more than a decade to make this law a reality. It will be transformational for tens of thousands of workers. Countless members of our union testified in support of this new law. 

We have some really important updated to share on this new leave program that are below.

How does this Paid Leave work?

The Minnesota Paid Leave Law will function in a similar manner to the state's unemployment insurance program, offering workers partial wage replacement for a qualifying life events. Qualifying events fall into two separate buckets.

1. Family Leave and Medical Leave – with each category providing up to 12 weeks of paid time off, or 20 weeks of combined paid time off when both a family leave and medical leave qualifying event occur.

Family Leave includes:

  • Time to care for a family member with a serious health condition
  • Time to bond with a new child in the family’s home (birth, adoption, foster care placement)
  • Military family leave, to support a family member called to active duty and
  • Safety Leave (time to respond to domestic assault, sexual assault, stalking etc.).

2. Medical Leave is:

  • Time to care for yourself for a qualifying medical event lasting at least 7 days.

DID YOU KNOW…

In the case of Bonding Leave, you have 12 months from the time of the qualifying event (birth, adoption or foster care placement) to use your bonding leave. That means, that even if your child was born in 2025, you can access the Paid Leave benefit in 2026. Better yet, even if you took time off from work in 2025, using an employer sponsored Paid Parental Leave benefit, you are still eligible to access the new state Paid Leave Program for the same bonding leave qualifying event! This is a huge benefit for workers and our union is determined to ensure all workers know this is available.

How is Minnesota Paid Leave paid for?

Long term, this program will be funded through a direct payroll premium, meaning employers and employees will contribute a percentage of payroll directly into the Paid Leave account; employers are responsible for making these payments on a quarterly basis, with the first payments due in April 2026.

However, the 2023 legislature also set aside a significant appropriation to ensure funding will be available immediately in January 2026. The law requires employers to pay for at least 50% of the payroll tax and permits employers to withhold employee earning for the other 50% of the payroll tax. The law does allow employers to cover the full amount of the payroll tax, and some employers are doing that, some are not. Currently, the cost of the payroll premium is 0.88% of pay.

If an employer’s policy is to split the premium 50/50 with employees, the individual employee will see 0.44% of their pay withheld by their employer (approximately $5/week for someone making $60,000 annually). Employers will have to notify their employees by December 1st of this year with their policy regarding the payroll premiums.

Toolkit / Helpful Resources

Thank you and please share this information to everyone in your networks so they are aware of their rights and their benefits under this new law.