Paid Maternity Leave by State: Employer Guide
Which states have paid maternity leave, who pays, and what small businesses owe. An employer guide to state paid family leave programs and FMLA.
Paid Maternity Leave by State
Which states have it, who pays for it, and what employers, especially small ones, actually owe
The first thing to know about paid maternity leave by state is that the question hides a trap in its wording. There is no law anywhere in the United States called maternity leave, and there is no federal paid leave at all. What actually exists is a patchwork: a federal unpaid-leave law that only covers larger employers, a growing set of state programs that pay part of an employee's wages during leave, and, everywhere else, whatever an employer chooses to offer. Whether a new parent gets paid time off depends almost entirely on which state they work in and who employs them.
For an employer, that patchwork is the whole challenge. If you have employees in one state, you have one set of rules to learn. If you have employees in several, you may face several different programs at once, each with its own contribution rate, coverage rules, and small-employer exemptions. And if you are under 50 employees, the federal law that anchors every explanation of this topic may not even apply to you, which changes the picture entirely.
This guide is written for the employer, and especially the small employer. It gives the short answer, explains the three layers of federal, state, and employer leave, lists which states currently pay benefits, compares them, breaks down who funds the contributions, and spends real time on the question most guides skip: what a business under 50 employees actually owes. I build leave and absence management and document handling into FirstHR because coordinating FMLA eligibility, state programs, and your own policy is exactly the kind of thing that goes wrong when it lives in scattered spreadsheets. State programs change often, so this is general information, not legal advice, and you should confirm the current status for your states.
The Short Answer
A group of more than a dozen states plus the District of Columbia currently have mandatory paid family and medical leave programs that pay benefits to employees during leave, including for bonding with a new child. In every other state, there is no state-mandated paid leave, and paid maternity leave exists only if the employer chooses to offer it. The federal government provides no paid leave anywhere; its only leave law, the FMLA, guarantees unpaid, job-protected time and applies only to employers with 50 or more employees.
For an employer, that resolves into three practical questions. First, do you have employees in a state with a paid leave program, and if so, what does it require you to contribute and administer? Second, does the federal FMLA apply to you, which depends on whether you have 50 or more employees? Third, in states with no program, what will you offer voluntarily? The rest of this guide answers each, but that three-part framing is the map, and it is worth holding onto as the details accumulate.
Federal, State, and Employer: The Three Layers
Paid maternity leave in the United States is best understood as three stacked layers, because no single one covers the whole picture and employers routinely confuse them. Getting these straight is the foundation for everything else, since your obligations come from different layers depending on your size and location.
The federal layer is the FMLA, and its defining features are that it is unpaid and limited. It provides up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave, meaning the employee's job is protected while they are out, but it provides no wage replacement, and it applies only to employers with 50 or more employees within a 75-mile radius, for employees who have worked a year and at least 1,250 hours. For a small business under 50 employees, the FMLA imposes no obligation at all, which is the single most important fact for that audience.
The state layer is where paid leave actually lives. A growing group of states plus DC run paid family and medical leave programs that replace part of an employee's wages during qualifying leave, funded through payroll contributions. These programs often cover employers of any size, so unlike FMLA, being small does not exempt you. The employer layer sits on top: in states with no program, and as an enhancement on top of state programs, an employer can offer its own paid maternity or parental leave policy. In most of the country, that voluntary employer policy is the only paid option a new parent has.
What Unpaid Maternity Leave Involves
Unpaid maternity leave is the default across most of the country: the employee keeps her job and stops being paid. Where FMLA applies, that means up to 12 weeks away with the same or an equivalent role waiting at the end, and no wage replacement from any source unless a state program or your own policy supplies it.
The part employers miss is that unpaid does not mean untouched. Group health coverage has to continue on the same terms for the whole FMLA leave, so your share of the premium keeps going out while there is no paycheck left to deduct her share from. Settle in writing how she will cover her portion before the last check is issued.
Accrued paid time off is the other question that comes up immediately. You can let an employee use accrued PTO to turn unpaid weeks into paid ones, and under FMLA you can require it. Either choice is fine; what causes disputes is deciding it case by case, so put the rule in the policy and apply it the same way for everyone.
Which States Have Paid Maternity Leave
The states that currently pay paid family leave benefits, which is the correct name for what people call maternity leave, are a growing group of more than a dozen plus the District of Columbia. As of this writing, the states with active programs paying benefits are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington, along with the District of Columbia. Two additional states, Maryland and Virginia, have enacted programs that are not yet paying benefits.
A few recent developments are worth flagging because they show how quickly this area moves. Several new state programs have begun paying benefits recently, expanding the group of active states. One state became the first in the nation to add a dedicated leave provision for parents of newborns needing neonatal intensive care, on top of standard bonding leave, which may signal a broader trend toward more specialized leave. And two more states have laws on the books with benefits scheduled to begin in future years. The direction is clearly toward more states and broader programs over time.
State-by-State Comparison
The table below summarizes the active state programs on the dimensions that matter most to an employer: the typical length of bonding leave, the general wage-replacement approach, and who funds the contribution. Treat every figure as a starting point to confirm, since states adjust weeks, replacement rates, and caps over time. The point of the table is the shape of the landscape, not a substitute for each state's official current numbers.
| State | Typical leave length | Funding source |
|---|---|---|
| California | Up to 8 weeks bonding, plus disability for recovery | Employee-funded |
| Colorado | Up to 12 weeks, plus added NICU leave | Employer and employee |
| Connecticut | Up to 12 weeks | Employee-funded |
| Delaware | Up to 12 weeks parental (size rules apply) | Employer and employee |
| District of Columbia | Up to 12 weeks | Employer-funded |
| Maine | Up to 12 weeks | Employer and employee |
| Massachusetts | Up to 12 weeks family, more combined | Employer and employee |
| Minnesota | Up to 12 weeks family, up to 20 combined | Employer and employee |
| New Jersey | Up to 12 weeks, plus disability for recovery | Employee-funded |
| New York | Up to 12 weeks | Employee-funded |
| Oregon | Up to 12 weeks | Employer and employee |
| Rhode Island | Around 6 weeks bonding, plus disability | Employee-funded |
| Washington | Up to 12 weeks family, more combined | Employer and employee |
Reading across the table, a few patterns stand out. Twelve weeks of bonding leave is the common baseline, though some states offer less for bonding alone and more when medical leave is combined. The funding source splits roughly into employee-funded programs, a shared employer-and-employee model that most newer states use, and the employer-funded District of Columbia. And several of the employee-funded states, California, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island, also mandate a separate state disability insurance benefit that covers the mother's medical recovery from childbirth, which stacks with bonding leave. Those coordination details are where administration gets real.
Who Pays for State Paid Family Leave
State paid family leave programs are funded through payroll contributions, but the question of who actually pays, the employer, the employee, or both, varies by state and directly affects your costs and payroll setup. There are three funding models, and knowing which applies in each of your states tells you both what you owe and what you must withhold.
The employee-funded model is the simplest for an employer's budget: you withhold the contribution from employee wages as a payroll deduction and remit it to the state, but you pay nothing yourself. The shared model, used by most newer programs, splits the contribution, so you both withhold the employee portion and pay an employer portion. The employer-funded model, used by the District of Columbia, puts the full contribution on the employer through a payroll tax. In every case, the employer is the one responsible for withholding, remitting, and reporting, even where employees bear the cost.
The contribution rates themselves are set as a percentage of wages and are adjusted, usually annually, by each state. Because they change and differ across states, there is no single number to memorize; the practical task is to confirm the current rate for each state where you have employees at the start of each year and set your payroll accordingly, alongside the rest of your state payroll taxes. What matters structurally is that you know, for each state, whether you owe an employer share and how much to withhold from employees, and that leads directly to the question that matters most for a small business.
What Small Businesses Actually Owe
This is the section most guides skip, and it is the one that matters most if you have fewer than 50 employees. The rules for small businesses are genuinely different from the rules for large ones, and the differences cut in two directions: some obligations do not apply to you, while others apply regardless of your size. Getting this right is the difference between compliance and either overpaying or missing a real duty.
Start with the federal law, because its non-application is the good news for small employers. The FMLA covers only employers with 50 or more employees, so if you are under that threshold, FMLA imposes no leave obligation on you at all. You are not required to provide the 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave that larger employers must. For many small businesses, this means their entire leave picture is set by their state and their own choices, not by federal law.
The state picture is where small does not always mean exempt. Many state paid leave programs apply to employers of any size, including those with a single employee, so a small business in one of those states must participate in the program: withhold contributions, and pay the employer share if one applies. What softens this is that a number of states exempt small employers, below a size threshold that varies by state, from the employer contribution share, while still requiring them to withhold and remit the employee portion. So a very small employer in such a state often pays nothing itself but still has the administrative job of deducting and remitting the employee contribution.
The takeaway for a small multi-state employer is to answer three questions per state: does the state have a program, does it cover an employer of my size, and am I exempt from the employer share but still on the hook for withholding? That per-state analysis is the real compliance work, and it does not reduce to a single national rule.
Those answers are worth writing down per state rather than holding in your head, because they differ by state, they are adjusted from year to year, and the withholding duty survives an exemption from the employer share. Our guide to paid family leave by state has a per-state setup sheet built for exactly that record.
The Majority of States Have No Mandate
It is easy to lose sight of the fact that most states still have no paid family leave program at all. In the majority of the country, there is no state-mandated paid maternity leave, which means that for employers in those states, paid leave is entirely a matter of choice. The federal FMLA may still require unpaid, job-protected leave if you have 50 or more employees, but nothing requires pay.
A handful of states without a full program take an intermediate step by authorizing voluntary private paid-leave insurance that employers can choose to buy, or by facilitating a state-run voluntary option. These do not guarantee any employee access, because participation is up to the employer, but they give employers in those states a structured way to offer paid leave if they want to. For most employers in most no-mandate states, though, the reality is straightforward: if you want your employees to have paid maternity leave, you offer it yourself.
Maternity Leave Laws in a State With No Program
In a no-program state the maternity leave laws come down to one federal statute plus whatever you write yourself. Indiana and Utah are ordinary examples: neither appears among the program states listed above, so an employer there owes unpaid FMLA leave once it reaches 50 employees and no leave law requires time off below that. Pregnancy accommodation rules are separate and reach smaller employers.
The practical consequence is that the answer becomes about you rather than about the state. Whatever paid time a new parent gets is what your own policy gives her, and there is no program to point her toward when she asks. That is why a written policy carries far more weight in these states than it does in California or New York, where the state answers most of the question for you.
This is not a reason to do nothing. Even where no law requires it, paid parental leave has become an increasingly expected and competitive benefit, and its absence is felt by candidates and employees. For a small business in a no-mandate state, a clear voluntary parental leave policy is often one of the higher-impact benefits you can offer relative to its cost, precisely because it signals real support at a moment that matters enormously to employees. How to write that policy is the last piece of the puzzle.
Coordinating State Leave With FMLA
For employers with 50 or more employees, the practical complexity is that FMLA and a state paid leave program often apply to the same leave at the same time, and they do different jobs. Understanding how they fit together prevents the common errors of double-counting leave or failing to run them concurrently.
The clean way to think about it is that FMLA protects the job while the state program provides the income. An eligible employee at a covered employer taking 12 weeks of bonding leave under FMLA is typically using FMLA job protection and receiving state wage-replacement benefits for the same 12 weeks, not 12 weeks of one followed by 12 of the other. Running them concurrently is standard and correct; treating them as additive would give far more leave than either law intends. California adds its own wrinkle, because a state job-protection statute sits alongside the federal one.
Where it gets more involved is when a mother's leave has two medical components. In states that mandate short-term disability, her recovery from childbirth may be covered by disability benefits, and her bonding time by the paid family leave benefit, with FMLA job protection spanning both. That is three interacting pieces for one leave, and getting the sequence and designations right requires careful tracking of dates, eligibility, and which benefit covers which period. This coordination is precisely where accurate records of tenure, hours, and leave dates stop being paperwork and become the thing that keeps you compliant.
The way to keep it straight is to lay one employee's leave out as a timeline before it starts and decide, period by period, which benefit is paying and what is running alongside it. Fill a copy in for each maternity leave you administer, and agree it with the employee before she goes out.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Period | First day | Last day | What pays during this period | Who files the claim, and by when | Employer top-up, if any | FMLA designated and running | PTO used or held | Health premium: who pays the employee share |
| 2 | Pregnancy-related absence before the birth | ||||||||
| 3 | Childbirth recovery, medically certified | ||||||||
| 4 | Bonding leave after recovery ends | ||||||||
| 5 | Any unpaid gap between benefits | ||||||||
| 6 | Return to work, phased or full | ||||||||
| 7 | |||||||||
| 8 |
Writing a Maternity Leave Policy
Whether you are in a state with a program or one without, you need a written maternity leave policy, because even where a state provides benefits, your own rules govern everything the state does not: how paid time coordinates, what you offer on top, and how the process works. A clear policy is what turns a confusing legal patchwork into a predictable experience for both the business and the employee. It also keeps you on the right side of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which requires that pregnancy-related conditions be treated no worse than any other temporary medical condition you accommodate.
A good policy answers a short list of questions plainly. How much leave is available, and how much of it is paid, whether by the state, by you, or by a combination? Who is eligible, and from what point? How does the leave coordinate with any state program, with FMLA if you are covered, and with accrued paid time off, including whether PTO keeps accruing while someone is out on FMLA? How does pay work during the leave, including how a state benefit and any employer top-up fit together? And what is the process to request and return from leave? Answering these in writing, consistently applied, prevents most disputes.
Handling Maternity and Paternity Leave in One Policy
Write a single parental leave policy that covers both parents, then treat the medical piece separately. State bonding benefits are parent-neutral, and FMLA bonding leave is available to fathers and non-birthing parents on the same terms as to mothers, so a policy that splits by gender creates a difference the leave laws do not.
What genuinely differs is recovery. Childbirth recovery is a medical absence that belongs to the birthing parent alone and is covered by disability benefits in the states that mandate them. That is why a mother is often out longer than a father even where the bonding entitlement is identical, and the policy should say so plainly instead of leaving people to work it out from the totals.
The obligations on the other side of that split are worth reading separately, since they follow different rules: our guide to whether paternity leave is required covers what an employer owes a new father.
For a small business, the policy is also a competitive tool, and it belongs in the same conversation as the rest of your small business benefits package. In a no-mandate state, a defined paid parental leave benefit sets you apart from employers who offer nothing. In a program state, a policy that clearly explains the state benefit and adds a reasonable employer top-up signals that you have your act together and that you support new parents. Either way, the policy should be consistent, applied the same way for everyone, and easy for a new hire to understand, ideally introduced during onboarding and written into the employee handbook so expectations are set from the start.
Frequently Asked Questions
What states have paid maternity leave?
There is no such thing as a dedicated maternity leave program; the correct term is paid family and medical leave, which covers bonding with a new child among other reasons. As of this writing, a group of more than a dozen states plus the District of Columbia have mandatory paid family leave programs that pay benefits, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington, along with DC. Two more states have enacted programs that are not yet paying benefits. Because programs launch and change frequently, always confirm the current list and status for your states.
Does the United States have federal paid maternity leave?
No. There is no federal law that requires paid maternity leave or paid family leave. The federal Family and Medical Leave Act provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave, but only for employers with 50 or more employees and only for employees who meet tenure and hours requirements. Paid leave in the United States comes entirely from state programs and from voluntary employer policies. This means in most states, whether a new parent gets paid time off depends on their state and their employer, not federal law.
Do small businesses have to provide paid maternity leave?
It depends on the state. The federal FMLA does not apply to employers with fewer than 50 employees, so it imposes no leave obligation on most small businesses. However, many state paid family leave programs apply to employers of any size, including those with a single employee, so a small business in one of those states must participate. Some states exempt small employers from the employer contribution share while still requiring them to withhold the employee share. The answer turns entirely on which state your employees work in.
Who pays for state paid family leave?
State paid family leave programs are funded through payroll contributions, but who pays varies by state. Some programs are funded entirely by employee contributions, which the employer withholds and remits but does not add to. Most newer programs split the contribution between employer and employee. A few, like the District of Columbia, are funded entirely by an employer payroll tax. Many states also exempt small employers from the employer share. Because rates and splits change annually, confirm the current contribution rate for each state where you have employees.
How much paid maternity leave do state programs provide?
Most state programs provide up to 12 weeks of paid family leave for bonding with a new child, though some allow more when combined with medical leave for the pregnancy and recovery. Wage replacement typically ranges from about 50 to 90 percent of the employee's average weekly wage, often on a sliding scale that replaces a higher percentage for lower earners, up to a state maximum weekly benefit. The exact weeks, replacement rate, and cap differ by state and are adjusted over time, so confirm the current figures for the relevant state.
What is the difference between FMLA and state paid family leave?
FMLA is federal, unpaid, and provides job protection: up to 12 weeks off with your job protected, but no pay, and only at employers with 50 or more employees. State paid family leave programs are state-level, paid, and replace part of wages during leave, often covering employers of any size. The two can run at the same time: an eligible employee may receive FMLA job protection and state wage-replacement benefits concurrently. FMLA protects the job; the state program provides the income. In states with no program, only FMLA or an employer policy applies.
Is short-term disability the same as paid maternity leave?
Not exactly, but it is related. A few states mandate temporary disability insurance, which replaces part of an employee's wages during the period they are medically unable to work, including recovery from childbirth. In those states, short-term disability covers the mother's medical recovery, while a separate paid family leave benefit covers bonding time. Short-term disability does not cover a non-birthing parent's bonding leave. So in some states, a new mother's paid time off comes from two coordinated sources: disability for recovery and family leave for bonding.
How should an employer handle maternity leave in a state with no program?
In the majority of states that have no paid family leave program, paid maternity leave is entirely up to the employer. Best practice is to write a clear parental leave policy that states how much paid time off is offered, who is eligible, how it coordinates with any accrued PTO and with FMLA if you have 50 or more employees, and how pay works during leave. Even without a mandate, offering paid parental leave is an increasingly expected and competitive benefit. A written, consistently applied policy prevents disputes and signals that the business supports new parents.