Parental leave policies are not all the same, even among the largest U.S. companies. Getting the answer to three key questions will enable job candidates to better assess the real value of a company’s paid leave plan before accepting a job offer. How many weeks of paid leave are provided for primary parents? How many weeks of paid leave are provided for secondary parents? What are the eligibility and tenure requirements to access and use paid leave?
These questions are critical because new research reveals that large companies vary widely on core features of their parental leave plans. So just asking whether a company offers parental leave is not enough to make an informed career decision.
Job candidates might assume that all large companies have responded similarly to the increasing demand for paid parental leave. More than eight out of ten American millennials said in an Ernst & Young survey that they would be more likely to join a company if it offered paid parental leave. This competitive pressure presumably would push large companies to converge upon a standard package for paid parental leave.
It turns out, that’s not case.
A comprehensive study by Hillary Cookler, PhD candidate and researcher at UCLA Anderson School of Management, dispels the notion that large companies are all the same when it comes to paid parental leave.
“People assume there’s a standard practice on paid parental leave,” said Cookler. “But in fact, there is no standard.” The lack of a standard means that the real value of parental leave plans varies significantly across companies, even within the same industry.
Wide Variation In Length Of Paid Parental Leave
Cookler evaluated the paid parental leave policies of the 500 largest U.S. public companies. The list of companies was generated from S&P Capital IQ based on LTM revenue as of August 20, 2024. Cookler created an online database that rates all 500 companies on their paid parental leave policies. The top performing companies are those that score well on both the transparency and quality of their paid leave.
One of the most surprising findings was the lack of policy standardization. The wide variation existed even on core policy features, not just peripheral details. “The massive variation in these firms’ paid parental leave policies was stunning,” said Cookler in a phone conversation.
Women are more likely to take leave and typically take longer leave than men. So Cookler focused on the length of paid time off for full-time, U.S.-based primary parents following the non-C-section birth of a child. Data on that metric was available for 64% of the 500 largest U.S. public companies.
What Cookler found was the opposite of a “standard.” The length of paid leave for primary parents ranged from zero to 52 weeks. In other words, some large companies offer not a single day of paid primary parent leave, while other companies offer a full year.
The study also debunked the possibility that most companies are similar, with just a few extreme outliers. “Leave policies aren’t tightly clustered around a single value,” Cookler explained via email.
Although the average paid leave for primary parents among the large companies in Cookler’s database was just over 11 weeks, there was a standard deviation of about 6.5 weeks. Even when Cookler eliminated outliers and considered just the middle 50% of the distribution (which researchers call “the interquartile range” or “IQR”), there was still a 10-week range in the length of paid primary parent leave.
Wide Variation On Parental Leave Even Within Industries
Cookler’s research highlighted not only the lack of an overall standard paid parental leave policy among the largest U.S. companies. The research also revealed the lack of a standard parental leave policy within most industries.
The 500 largest U.S. public companies include 19 different industries, based on the North American Industry Classification System. For each industry, Cookler graphed the average and range of the number of weeks of paid primary parent leave.
As Figure 1 shows, paid leave policies varied widely within at least 17 of the 19 industries.
Because Cookler could only confirm the length of paid primary parent leave for 64% of the largest companies, the graph likely paints an overly rosy picture of industry-specific leave policies. Cookler found a strong correlation between transparency and quality of paid leave. This finding suggests that the companies that are missing due to lack of data are likely to be on the low end of the policy ranges.
Wide Variation On Other Aspects Of Parental Leave
Parental leave policies at large U.S. companies also vary widely on dimensions other than the length of paid leave for primary parents. Those variations can significantly impact the value of a parental leave policy.
For example, there is no standard length of paid leave for secondary parents, who often include male partners of birth parents. A 2022 study by JUST Capital found wide variation on paid leave policies for secondary parents among Russell 1000 companies, with 75% failing to offer leave parity to primary and secondary parents. Among the 25% of companies that did offer leave parity, only 9% provided paid leave at a length of 12 or more weeks.
Large companies’ paid parental leave policies also vary on eligibility requirements. Some companies offer paid leave to salaried but not hourly workers. Some companies offer paid leave to full-time but not part-time employees.
Polices also vary on when paid parental leave can be used. Some companies make paid leave immediately available to new hires, while others require a lengthy period of service with the company before paid leave is available. Some companies allow leave to be taken intermittently or on a part-time basis, while others require leave to be taken all at once.
“Just like the range of strollers available on the market, not all parental leave is the same,” said manager Claire Hastwell in a 2023 blog post for Great Place To Work.
Link To Lack Of Transparency
The challenge of navigating the variations among large companies’ paid parental leave policies is exacerbated by an overall lack of public transparency. Among the 500 largest U.S. companies in Cookler’s database, only 51% confirmed on their website whether they did or did not offer paid parental leave.
Far less than half of the company websites included sufficient details to enable employees to make informed job decisions, or to enable companies to ensure that their policies remain competitive. Only 34% of the company websites included details about the length of parental leave offered. Just 10% of the company websites provided details about eligibility and tenure requirements for paid parental leave.
The 2022 study by JUST Capital found similarly low levels of parental leave transparency among the larger group of Russell 1000 companies.
The Lack Of Standard Parental Leave Impacts Gender Equity
Large companies can no longer ignore the connection between adequate paid parental leave and women’s workplace advancement.
Women in Gen Z are the first cohort to rank paid leave as their top priority among employee benefits—even higher priority than health insurance—according to 2024 data from MetLife. Among all working adults, 62% identified access to paid family leave as an ongoing challenge for women in the American workforce, according to a 2022 JUST Capital survey.
Not only do Americans care about paid parental leave, they also share a belief about the length of leave that is required. In the JUST Capital survey, nearly two-thirds of workers said they believed that it is necessary for companies to provide at least 12 weeks of paid parental leave to all workers. Job candidates should not assume, however, that large U.S. companies have adopted this expectation as a standard practice.