Disclaimer and known limitations

Nothing on this site is a decision about your contributions or your benefits. Only the state agency administering a programme can determine what an employer owes or what a claimant receives. They hold information we do not: your actual wage records, your employment history, your claim details, and the discretion the statute gives them.

We do not model eligibility at all. Every state applies an earnings test over a base period, and several apply employment-history conditions on top. The benefits calculator estimates what a payment would be if you qualify. It does not and cannot tell you whether you qualify, and nothing on this site should be read as saying you do.

Use these figures to budget, to plan, and to ask better questions. Do not use them to file, to remit, or to make an irreversible decision without confirming with the agency first.

The most common way a paid leave figure goes wrong is not arithmetic. It is that somebody read a correct number from the wrong year. Several jurisdictions reset partway through the calendar year, which catches out anyone assuming a single January refresh:

• Colorado — 1 July. Colorado’s state average weekly wage takes effect at 12:01am on 1 July and runs to 30 June.
• District of Columbia — 1 October. Two different dates. D.C. Code 32-541.04 adjusts the maximum weekly benefit every 1 October, but the 90% bracket is a multiple of the DC minimum wage, which rises every 1 July. DC needs checking twice a year.
• Oregon — 28 June. Oregon changes at the start of the benefit week containing the end of June, so the exact date shifts by a day or two each year. 28 June 2026 is this year’s.
• Rhode Island — 1 July. Rhode Island’s maximum weekly benefit rate changes for new claims with an effective date of 1 July or later.

The District of Columbia deserves the extra mention it gets above: its maximum weekly benefit is adjusted every 1 October under D.C. Code § 32-541.04, while the 90% bracket in its formula is a multiple of the DC minimum wage and moves every 1 July. One date does not describe DC, and a maintenance cycle that checks it once a year will be wrong for part of every year.

We check on that rhythm deliberately — late June, late September, and November — rather than sweeping everything once. The schedule is in our sources and methodology page.

Every figure on this site carries the date somebody last opened the agency page and read it, and a link to that page. Those two things together are the only reason to trust anything here.

• The date is when we checked, not when the rate changed. A rate verified in August 2026 for the 2026 plan year is current. The same date against a state that reset in October would not be.
• It turns amber after 180 days. The badge changes colour on the page itself once a figure is more than six months old. That is a prompt to click through to the source rather than a statement that the figure is wrong.
• Follow the source link before you rely on it. The agency page is authoritative and we are not. If the two ever disagree, the agency is right and we have a bug — please tell us.
• A dash means we do not know. Where a figure shows “—” the agency has not published it. It never means zero, and we never fill the gap with last year’s number.

These are open gaps, not oversights we are hoping nobody notices. Each one is in our verification cycle.

Waiting periods in 6 jurisdictions

We could not confirm from the agency whether Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey and Rhode Island apply an unpaid waiting period before benefits begin. Rather than guess, those render as “Not confirmed” with a link to the agency. This is deliberately different from “None”, which we show only where we have confirmed there is no waiting period. If you need to know, ask the agency, and please tell us what they say.

Unpublished figures

Maine and Maryland have not published a figure the calculation needs. Maine defines its maximum weekly benefit as the state average weekly wage, which has not been released, so both the maximum and the reference wage its formula depends on are missing. Maryland has a statutory $1,000 maximum but no published reference wage for the bracket beneath it. Both render “—” rather than a carried-forward figure.

Maryland is not paying benefits yet

Maryland contributions begin January 2027 and benefits begin January 2028. These are different dates a year apart, and money leaving a paycheque does not yet mean a claim can be made. We show the row rather than hiding the state, because silently dropping it would be worse than showing that it is coming.

Even earnings across the year

California and Rhode Island do not calculate from your average weekly wage. Rhode Island pays a percentage of your highest-earning quarter, and California uses highest-quarter earnings to decide which rate band applies. We only know the wage figure you typed, so we assume you earned evenly across the year and derive a quarter from it. If your income is seasonal, commission-heavy, or you changed jobs, your real figure will differ. That assumption is printed next to the result, not hidden here.

Base-period caps are not modelled

California Disability Insurance, New Jersey Temporary Disability Insurance and Rhode Island Temporary Disability Insurance each cap the total benefit against your base-period wages — one third of base-year wages in New Jersey, for example. Someone with a short or interrupted work history can hit that ceiling well before the weekly maximum or the week count runs out. We do not model it, and we say so on those states’ results.

Wage caps applied per employee

On the employer side, wage caps apply per employee rather than to aggregate payroll. We divide the payroll you enter by the headcount you enter and apply the cap to that average. If your wages are unevenly distributed — a handful of high earners above the cap and everyone else below it — the real figure will differ. The report states this assumption alongside the number.

New Jersey’s employer disability contribution

New Jersey experience-rates the employer disability contribution per employer. It cannot be modelled from public data, so the employer figure we show for New Jersey is a floor, not an estimate of what you will actually pay.

We would rather hear about a wrong number from you than leave it up. If a figure here disagrees with the agency page it links to, the agency is right.

Email info@treesera.com with the page, the figure, and ideally the agency link showing the correct value. Here is what happens next:

• We acknowledge within two working days. A real reply from a person, telling you whether we can reproduce it.
• A confirmed wrong rate is corrected within one working day. A published figure that is wrong is the most serious defect this site can have, and it goes to the front of the queue. The correction ships with an updated verification date.
• Anything else within ten working days. Unclear wording, a missing caveat, a broken link, or a figure we cannot confirm either way.
• We do not quietly edit. Where a correction changes a number materially, the change is described rather than slipped in.

Nothing on pfmlcalculator.com is legal, tax, accounting, or financial advice. It is reference information and an arithmetic tool. Paid leave interacts with the federal FMLA, with state leave laws, with your employer’s own policies, and with your tax position in ways that depend on facts we do not have. For a decision that matters, speak to a qualified professional or to the agency.

pfmlcalculator.com is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by any state agency or the U.S. government.

We are Treesera Technologies. We are not a government body, we have no relationship with any of the agencies whose figures we publish, and we cannot act on your behalf with any of them. See our about page for who maintains this, sources and methodology for how the figures are gathered, and our terms of use.