All about paid maternity leave

As of 2021, about 55% of employers in the United States offer paid maternity leave. But not all maternity leave policies are created equally.

Unlike almost every other industrialized nation in the world, there is no federal requirement that standardizes paid maternity leave in the United States. While there is a federal law mandating maternity leave, a vast number of women in the United States do not enjoy access to any paid job protection after the birth of a new baby.

About the Family Medical Leave Act

There is, however, a federal requirement under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), that many women without access to paid maternity leave use to at least take unpaid time off from work and in order to be able to return to their jobs after childbirth. FMLA protects a worker’s job for up to 12 weeks during any 12 month period, if they meet certain eligibility criteria (e.g. they have worked for an employer for at least one year, clocking a minimum of 1,250 hours and the employer has at least 50 employees within 75 miles of her physical worksite).

Those who are fortunate to qualify for more than FMLA do so because they benefit from their employer’s benefit policies. Private companies and employers committed to diversity will offer maternity leave policies, paternity leave policies and short-term disability policies for their employees, in addition to traditional benefits like healthcare insurance and vacation benefits. In the past few years, in particular, there has been tremendous movement on the part of private employers to fill the gap and provide payment to employees during their parental leave.

Companies and maternity leave policies

Historically, it’s been hard for expecting mothers to ask about their employer about their maternity leave policies for fear of being stigmatized or judged as less committed. Many women fear being “mommy tracked” at work — coming back to a demotion or being taken off a leadership track. As a result, it’s been difficult for women to find out what their employers’ leave policies are. From its founding, Fairygodboss has crowdsourced a maternity leave database of over 1,500 employers in the U.S. and sorted their maternity and paternity leave policies by industry and length.

Certain patterns emerge among the companies that offer these very high levels of paid leave. First, they are largely for-profit institutions (the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, change.org and the United Nations being a few of the exceptions), and they are organizations with professional workforces who need to see a commitment to diversity to be retained. After all, upwards of 80% of professional employees say they consider an employer’s commitment to diversity in making job search decisions.

One thing to note is that while paid leave policies may exist for professional staff at these companies, certain employers choose to offer different benefits to contractual, part-time, hourly workers or other classifications of employees. At law firms, for example, attorneys may be eligible for paid maternity leave while administrative, operational and paralegal staff may have access to a lower level of benefit.

Another thing to note is that many of these companies offer different levels of paternity leave to their employees, or make a designation regarding who is the “primary caretaker,” which means that one person of a presumed two-person household may be entitled to a longer leave if they are the primary caretaker for the child. It’s a gender-neutral term that some employers have chosen to set their parental policy around, rather than pick a policy for a mother or father of a child.

Finally, just as a few employers have chosen to give their employees “unlimited” paid time off (or PTO), some also offer unlimited paid family leave. This leaves the decision as to time off for maternity or paternity leave with the individual employee and their manager. There is obviously no obligation to take any certain period of maternity leave, so some employees may come back within a much shorter time than the full potential allotment they are entitled to.

The Top 180 Employers in 2021 for Paid Maternity Leave

Each of the employers in the below list offer at least 16 weeks of paid maternity leave. If your company is missing from the list, please submit an anonymous tip to our database.

Companies That Offer Up To 52 Weeks Paid Maternity Leave

1. Netflix

2. Bill & Melinda Gate Foundation

3. American Income Life

4. Rangle.io

5. Intact Financial Corporation

6. LeverX

8. Scentsy

9. Securitas AB

Companies That Offer 50 Weeks Paid Maternity Leave

10. FedEx

11. Intercontinental Hotels Group

12. Mitie

Companies That Offer 40 Weeks Paid Maternity Leave

13. TIAA

14. Vectrus

Companies That Offer 39 Weeks Paid Maternity Leave

15. AO.com

Companies That Offer 26 Weeks Paid Maternity Leave

16. Etsy

17. Mozilla

18. Bloomberg

19. Cahill Gordon

20. Linklaters LLP

21. Shopify

22. Salesforce

23. The Dannon Company, Inc.

24. Freeport-McMoRan

Companies that offer 25 weeks paid maternity leave

25. Open Society Foundations

Companies that offer 24 weeks paid maternity leave

26. Dropbox

A note from Dropbox: “Dropboxers welcoming a new child are eligilble to take 24 paid weeks off at birth or adoption, plus a Transition Week to help them transition back into their role. They also offer up to $10k in reimbursement (per child) for Adoption Expenses, for up to 2 finalized adoptions.”

27. Google

28. Zynga

29. Spotify

30. eBay Inc.

31. ZestFinance

32. 72andsunny

33. Lenovo

34. Clifford Chance

35. Hewlett Packard Enterprise

36. Ticketmaster

Companies that offer 22 weeks paid maternity leave

37. Kirkland & Ellis

38. Sidley Austin

Companies that offer 20 weeks paid maternity leave

39. MongoDB, Inc.

40. Realtor.com

A note from Realtor.com: “Our Parental Leave policy provides eligible employees with at least six months of service up to 20 weeks of maternity and/or parental leave to care for a newborn child or a child who has been placed with the employee for adoption or foster care for a primary caregiver, and four weeks for a secondary caregiver. Such leave can begin up to two weeks prior to the expected delivery or placement date and must conclude within one year following the birth or placement of the child. This leave may be taken in shorter intervals of not less than one-week blocks of time.”