Tomorrow, the House Workforce Protections Subcommittee is holding a hearing on proposals to mandate employers provide employees paid sick leave. One proposal that will be a focus is the “Healthy Families Act,” which would require businesses with 15 or more employees to offer 7 days of paid sick leave.
Just what the economy needs is for Congress to increase regulations and make it more expensive to hire workers.
When the media reports on proposals like this, they tend to only focus on the fact that the minority of workers who don’t already have access to paid leave will now have paid days off (presuming they still have jobs) but ignore the costs this legislation proposes. But there are real costs to these type of benefits: they reduce productivity and make it more expensive to hire workers. That’s bad news toanyone who is right now looking for a job, but particularly for lower income workers (as I write here).