This is pretty suspect to me. I think it would mean more if it were "legally required days available" or "average days taken" or "average days available".

assuming that the parents reside in the main business city and work in the retail sector

This just seems bad to me. In America, there's no way parents who work in the retail sector get half the year off.

[–] i_dont_want_to@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

FMLA is 12 weeks for qualifying events, like birth of a child. I think that one parent can start it after the baby is born, then the other can after the first parent's leave is exhausted.

This chart does not show that FMLA is unpaid leave. It only holds your job for you.

FMLA is only available to you if you have been with the same employer for one year. Been there for only 11 months? Better hope they're merciful.

It also neglects if anything else uses up your leave, like if you need to use some because of pregnancy complications. The 12 weeks only replenishes after a year. So if you need to take off because of horrific morning sickness, that chips away at your FMLA. A lot of people may not have enough PTO for their prenatal doctors appointments, so this is another thing that can use up some available FMLA that you could have used after the baby is born.

Of the people that I did know using it, both would use it concurrently or at least with some overlap. However, if both parents were at the same employer for a year, were not contractors/temps/some other status that would make them ineligible, didn't need to use any of their FMLA before the baby was born, didn't want to use any of it together, and can bear the cost of losing that much income, sure, they can combined take off 6 months.

[–] dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Also, FMLA only applies to employers who have more than 50 employees. There’s a lot of small businesses in the US that have fewer than 50 employees.

[–] evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

The data source here says they assume someone working at a 60 person business, so fmla applies. It's not paid, though, like the chart says.

[–] sunzu@kbin.run 2 points 3 months ago

US is fucking savage

[–] EarMaster@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The data source is described pretty well. If you think the US should score lower this is your personal experience and not backed up by the data.

[–] evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

I do like how well they describe the data source (other than the unclear "main business city" part). It gives enough detail to know that the FMLA applies, which would total the 168 days shown here. FMLA is unpaid, however, but the chart says paid days, which should be zero. The "data souce" page does not specify that the leave is paid, so I'd suspect it's wrong for other countries as well.