Paid leave would be a benefit to our portfolio companies as it would standardize policy, build resilience to weather future economic or public health crises, and promotes gender equity which in turn benefits the economy.

The lack of a national paid leave program in the United States results in a patchwork of state-based paid leave programs that leaves 80 percent of private-sector workers uncovered. The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world, and the only high-income country, that does not have a national paid leave public policy. The lack of a federal leave policy creates systemic risks for our economy and studies show that a paid leave policy has the possibility of growing our GDP by at least 5%.

Paid leave also plays a critical role in stemming the tide of women leaving the workforce and fostering gender equity both at work and at home. The National Bureau of Economic Research published a study in 2013 finding that the United State’s lack of family-friendly policies has accounted for an almost 30 percent decline in female labor force participation in the U.S. between 1990 and 2010, relative to more than 20 other high-income countries. Moreover, state-level paid leave programs show that paid family leave in California and New Jersey improved women’s earnings and labor force participation. A Harvard Business Review study found that every 10 percent increase in women working is associated with a 5 percent increase in wages for all workers as overall labor force productivity increases. And, in a report earlier this year,  the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco concluded that equalizing employment across gender would have added almost $500 billion to the U.S. GDP in 2019.