Work hours & pay
Sick leave accrual calculator
Enter the hours you have worked and your accrual rate to see how much paid sick leave you have earned, in hours and days, and the cap if one applies.
Pick the rate in your policy or local law. Set the cap to 0 if accrual never stops; otherwise balances stop growing once they reach the cap.
How sick leave accrues by the hour
Hourly accrual earns a fixed amount of paid sick time for every block of hours you work: hours worked ÷ hours required per sick hour. A rate of one hour per thirty worked means you divide total hours by 30. Many US state and city laws use exactly this rate, and a cap sets the most you can build up at once, after which accrual pauses until you use some.
With the defaults, 1,000 hours worked at one hour per 30 gives 1,000 ÷ 30 = 33.3 sick hours, which is 33.3 ÷ 8 = 4.2 eight-hour days. Each full 40-hour week adds 40 ÷ 30 = 1.33 hours. You are partway through a day: reaching the next whole eight-hour day needs 6.67 more sick hours, which takes 6.67 × 30 = 200 further hours on the job. The 40-hour cap here is not yet reached, so the balance keeps climbing.
| Hours worked | Sick hours | Sick days |
|---|---|---|
| 250 h | 8.3 h | 1.04 days |
| 500 h | 16.7 h | 2.08 days |
| 1,000 h | 33.3 h | 4.17 days |
| 2,080 h | 40.0 h | 5.00 days |
Caps, carry-over and what the law requires
The cap is the detail people miss. A policy may let you accrue up to 40 or 48 hours and stop there, so working more hours past the cap earns nothing until you take sick time and free up room. Separately, many laws limit how much you can carry into a new year or how much you can use in a year, and these two limits can differ, so a balance you keep is not always a balance you may spend.
Accrual rates come from law as much as from employers. Under California's paid sick leave law, employees earn at least one hour for every 30 hours worked, a common benchmark other places echo; the US federal Fair Labor Standards Act, by contrast, does not require any paid sick leave at all, leaving it to states, cities and employers. Check whether your rate is set per hour worked, as modeled here, or granted as a lump sum at the start of the year, because the two produce very different mid-year balances. This tool assumes steady hourly accrual with no waiting period.
Frequently asked questions
How is sick leave accrual calculated?
Divide the hours you have worked by the hours required per sick hour. At one hour per 30 worked, 1,000 hours gives 1,000 ÷ 30 = 33.3 hours of paid sick leave.
What does an accrual cap mean?
It is the maximum balance you can hold. Once you reach it, accrual pauses and resumes only after you use some sick time, so hours worked beyond the cap earn nothing.
How many hours do I work to earn a day of sick leave?
Multiply the hours in your workday by the accrual divisor. For an eight-hour day at one hour per 30, that is 8 × 30 = 240 hours of work per sick day.