Does Missouri require paid family or sick leave in 2026?
No. Missouri has no state paid family leave law, and the paid sick leave mandate voters passed in 2024 was repealed before 2026. Federal FMLA gives 12 weeks unpaid at employers with 50 or more employees. Everything else is the policy you write.
· Missouri, United States guide
Illustration · St. Louis, Missouri
Missouri mandates no paid family leave and, for 2026, no paid sick leave. There is no state programme, no payroll withholding line, and no claim portal. The only job-protected floor is federal FMLA, and it reaches only employers with 50 or more employees.
That makes the offer letter the whole story. Below 50 employees the federal floor is PWFA accommodation at 15 employees, USERRA reemployment, and jury-duty protection. Paid parental leave, paid sick days and any wage replacement are yours to design, and that design is what a candidate compares against an offer from a paid-leave state next door like Illinois or Kansas.
Does Missouri require paid family leave?
No. Missouri has no state paid family leave law. Around a dozen states plus Washington DC run mandatory paid-family-leave programmes funded by payroll contributions; Missouri is not one of them.
There is no state PFL line on a Missouri payslip, no contribution rate, and no benefit claim to file. Bills to create a Missouri family-leave benefit have been introduced but none has become law, so nothing is withheld and nothing is owed.
Missouri runs a flat-rate income tax and a light state benefit stack, which you can compare in full on the Missouri state tax and unemployment insurance page. The trade-off is that none of the wage-replacement protection a candidate in a paid-leave state takes for granted is provided here. Hire in Illinois and you face a mandatory PFL programme; hire in Missouri and you face none.
For a hire below the FMLA threshold there is no statutory job hold for a new baby, a serious illness, or a family emergency. Whatever paid parental, paid sick or paid bereavement leave a Missouri employee receives is the leave the employer chose to write into the offer. That is a competitive decision, not a compliance one, and it matters most when you are competing for talent against employers in states where the floor is higher. Review Missouri pay requirements alongside your leave package on the Missouri wage, overtime and meal break law page.
Does Missouri require paid sick leave?
No, not for 2026. Missouri voters passed Proposition A in November 2024, which required earned paid sick time from 1 May 2025. The legislature then repealed that mandate through House Bill 567, signed in July 2025 and effective 28 August 2025.
So there was a paid-sick-leave requirement in Missouri for one 17-week window in 2025, and from 28 August 2025 onward there is none. For 2026 a Missouri employer is not required to provide paid sick days at all.
The repeal is the one Missouri-specific thing to get right. Proposition A would have built earned paid sick time into every Missouri job; HB 567 removed it before it could settle in, and the same bill also stripped out the automatic annual minimum-wage indexing Proposition A had set, while leaving the $15 per hour minimum wage for 2026 in place. The Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations publishes current guidance for any updates after 28 August 2025.
Two practical points follow. First, employees keep whatever sick time they had already earned under the 2025 law; the Missouri Department of Labor has issued no payout rule, so what happens to an accrued balance is governed by the employer's own policy. Second, no Missouri city currently enforces a local paid-sick-leave ordinance, and Missouri has no statewide law preempting one, so a single national sick-leave policy applies cleanly across St. Louis, Kansas City and every county today, with the caveat that a city retains the authority to act later.
The risk here is competitive, not legal. A remote-first employer offering 8 to 10 paid sick days inside a single PTO bank reads very differently to a Missouri candidate than a silent offer letter, especially to one who remembers earning paid sick time in 2025. In a state that now mandates nothing, the policy is the differentiator. See how Missouri's position compares to a state that never had a mandate on the Kansas paid family and sick leave page.
What does federal FMLA give Missouri employees?
Federal FMLA gives eligible Missouri employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per 12-month period, with group health coverage continued at the employer's normal contribution.
It applies only to employers with 50 or more employees within a 75-mile radius. The employee qualifies after 12 months of tenure and 1,250 hours worked in the prior year.
You trip the 50-employee FMLA threshold on your entire US headcount, not just Missouri staff. Hire 30 people in Missouri and 25 in another state and you owe FMLA to every eligible worker in both states, whether or not either state alone crosses 50. With Missouri's own paid-sick-leave mandate repealed, FMLA is now the only statutory leave floor in the state.
Source: US Department of Labor, Family and Medical Leave Act
Once you cross the 50-employee line the obligation runs for the rest of the current calendar year and the full following year, even if headcount later falls back. That stickiness catches fast-growing Missouri teams off guard, especially when a Missouri hire takes you over the threshold for the first time.
| FMLA element | Federal rule |
|---|---|
| Employer threshold | 50+ employees within 75 miles, 20+ weeks in the current or prior year |
| Employee eligibility | 12 months employed and 1,250 hours worked in the prior 12 months |
| Standard leave | 12 weeks unpaid, job protected, per 12-month period |
| Military caregiver leave | 26 weeks in a single 12-month period |
| Pay during leave | None; FMLA is unpaid by statute |
FMLA gives no wage replacement of its own. Below 50 employees, or for a worker in their first 12 months, there is no FMLA right at all and no Missouri mini-FMLA to fall back on. For termination rights that interact with leave, see the Missouri termination law and at-will exceptions page.
What pregnancy and disability protections apply in Missouri?
Federal law applies and Missouri adds nothing on top. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act requires reasonable accommodation for pregnancy, childbirth and related conditions at any employer with 15 or more employees.
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act apply at the same 15-employee threshold, and the PUMP Act gives nursing employees break time and a private space at almost every employer.
Between 15 and 50 employees there is a real gap. The PWFA covers accommodation, such as modified duties, schedule changes, time off for appointments and lactation breaks, but FMLA does not yet apply, so no statute gives a Missouri worker a 12-week job hold for the birth itself. The EEOC enforces both PWFA and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and publishes guidance on what reasonable accommodation requires in practice.
That gap is the decision your offer letter has to make explicit. The most retention-critical voluntary line for a Missouri hire is paid parental leave, because federal unpaid FMLA at 50 and PWFA accommodation at 15 leave a wide space that only a written policy fills. Use the Employer Cost Calculator to model what a parental leave top-up adds to your total Missouri employment cost.
Missouri employers under 50, military leave and jury duty
Below 50 employees Missouri imposes no mandatory leave law, with three narrow exceptions that apply at any size: PWFA accommodation at 15 employees, USERRA reemployment for service members, and jury-duty protection.
USERRA protects a service member's civilian job for up to five years of cumulative service and reinstates them on the escalator principle. Missouri law bars firing or disciplining an employee for answering a jury summons.
USERRA reinstates a returning service member to the position they would have reached had they not been called up, not simply the job they left. Health-plan continuation runs alongside, and the protection applies regardless of company size. The US Department of Labor's Veterans' Employment and Training Service administers USERRA complaints.
For most small Missouri employers this is the entire mandatory picture: accommodate pregnancy at 15 employees, reinstate service members, and protect jury service. Everything beyond that, including the 26-week military caregiver entitlement that arrives with FMLA at 50 employees, is either a federal trigger you grow into or a voluntary benefit you choose. The US hiring guide sets out how Missouri's minimal leave stack compares to the federal baseline across all 50 states.
How Teamed runs Missouri leave end to end
Teamed becomes your legal employer of record in Missouri for from $599 per employee per month flat, with zero FX mark-up. You design the leave package; we administer it and track every federal trigger for you.
FMLA eligibility, the 50-employee threshold measured across your whole US payroll, PWFA accommodation logging, USERRA reinstatement and jury-duty pay continuation all run on one platform.
Real HR and legal experts handle your Missouri hires and know the FMLA, PWFA and USERRA stack by heart. An actual person, not a chatbot or a pooled queue. There is no setup fee and no exit fee, and statutory employer cost (FICA, FUTA, SUTA, workers' compensation) passes through at cost, itemised on every invoice.
Contractor onboarding, EOR payroll and entity graduation all live on one platform. A Missouri contractor who converts to W-2 keeps their record, and that same employee can graduate to your own US entity without switching systems when the model no longer fits. Use the Crossover Calculator to see the month the model flips. Missouri leave is simpler than states like Illinois precisely because there is no state programme to administer, but the FMLA threshold and PWFA obligations still require the same careful tracking. EOR is the right model for a first Missouri hire, until it isn't.
Missouri is the one state where the leave answer changed twice in a year. Voters added earned paid sick time, the legislature repealed it, and for 2026 the floor is back to federal FMLA at 50 employees and nothing else. The work is not compliance, it is policy design, and a candidate who earned paid sick days in 2025 will notice whether your offer keeps them.
Missouri added paid sick leave by ballot, then repealed it before 2026. The floor is federal FMLA at 50 employees and unpaid.
The minimum wage held at $15 an hour, but the sick-day mandate is gone, and no state family-leave benefit ever arrived.
In Missouri the offer letter is the leave policy. That is the whole job, and it is worth doing well.
