Claims that only 12 percent of private-sector employees currently have access to employer-paid family leave don’t “match well with real-life experience or casual observation” or with data from nationally representative surveys, which find that more than half of employed mothers were offered paid maternity leave. Turns out that the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics uses tricky, and underinclusive, definitions. “As a result, BLS figures seem to grossly underestimate paid family leave availability. BLS methods penalize employers that provide flexible benefits, by pretending their benefits don’t exist.” [Vanessa Brown Calder, Cato]
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