NFIB

The Economic Costs of Expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act
03/01/2002

The federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) became effective in April 1995, for firms with more than 50 employees. It has since been proposed in Congress to expand the coverage of FMLA to cover small businesses. NFIB's new Regulatory Impact Model (RIM) is used to study the effects of expanding the FMLA to firms with less than 50 employees.

This paper focuses on estimation of three kinds of costs for small business owners that would be caused by an expansion of the FMLA: labor costs, management costs and various fees. The results of the analysis suggest that an expanded version of the FMLA would have serious, negative effects on the small business sector.