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Data Hit

California Workers Without Adequate Paid Sick Days as COVID Surge Hits Again

July 2022 | By Kristin Schumacher

Portrait of a sick woman at home blowing her nose with a tissue

California workers deserve to be safe, healthy, and thrive. State leaders created COVID-19 supplemental paid sick leave to ensure workers were able to take time off to care for themselves and loved ones while following public health guidelines. This temporary policy lapses once again on September 30, 2022. Without it, many workers may have just three paid sick days a year.

During the early 2022 surge in cases, the number of Californians who reported that they were not working because they had coronavirus symptoms or were caring for someone who did increased by 320% — soaring to nearly 1 million adults statewide.

Without COVID-19 supplemental paid sick leave, workers may have to choose between working while sick and losing pay or even their job. Extending supplemental paid sick leave is critical so workers can care for themselves or family. The state should also require employers to provide 10 paid sick days a year to support workers’ health and safety beyond the pandemic.

Note: This post was updated in July 2022 to reflect changes in state policy proposals.

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All Californians — regardless of income, race, or zip code — deserve to feel secure in their ability to put food on the table and make their rent or mortgage payment. Yet high costs of living are straining the budgets of Californians with low incomes, who have long been struggling to make ends meet.

More than half of California households with incomes below $50,000 had difficulty paying for basic expenses such as food, housing, and medical costs in March and April. Black, Latinx, and other Californians of color were more likely to struggle with basic expenses, being more likely to have low incomes due to past racist policies and ongoing discrimination.

Californians with low incomes are hit hardest by the rising costs of necessities. Policymakers should make sure state efforts to give Californians relief prioritize meaningful assistance to these families and individuals, who have long been blocked from opportunities and have been hit hardest by the health and economic impacts of COVID-19.

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All Californians, regardless of their county, race, age, or immigration status should have the support they need to make ends meet and pay for basic necessities. State refundable tax credits — the CalEITC and Young Child Tax Credit — are a key way the state provides economic support to Californians with low incomes. Racism, sexism, socioeconomic discrimination, and inequitable policies have kept millions of Californians in poverty. But research shows refundable tax credits help families and individuals avoid poverty and food hardship, have better health, and experience improved educational achievement and economic security.

California’s refundable credits are specifically targeted to families and individuals with the lowest incomes and available to people who file taxes without regard to immigration status. These credits reach people with earnings from $1 to $30,000 — equivalent to a full-time, minimum-wage salary. Proposals by the governor and Legislature would make children and families without income from employment also eligible to benefit from the state’s child tax credit.

Leaders Can Ensure Tax Credits Deliver the Support Californians with Low Incomes Need

Across all regions of California, millions of children, parents, and working adults are eligible to claim
the CalEITC and the Young Child Tax Credit by filing their taxes. State and local leaders can do
several things to make sure tax credits deliver the support these Californians need to meet their
basic needs and thrive:

  • Boosting the size of these credits. For families and for adults without children this is an effective and efficient way to direct flexible resources to Californians who most need support to make ends meet.
  • Piggybacking on the CalEITC and Young Child Tax Credit when targeting one-time taxpayer rebates or relief payments. By automatically issuing payments to filers who claim state credits, support can be directed to Californians with low incomes while leveraging existing administrative infrastructure and minimizing red tape for people receiving support.
  • Expanding the availability of free tax preparation and filing services. This can help ensure that the full benefit of credits goes to families and individuals, and is not reduced by for-profit tax preparation fees.

How many children, parents, and adult individuals are eligible to benefit from California’s refundable tax credits?

Estimates for each of California’s regions and counties are included in this report.1Estimates are based on simulation of income taxes in public-use microdata from the US Census Bureau, American Community Survey, downloaded from IPUMS USA (University of Minnesota, www.ipums.org), using a tax simulation model developed for the California Poverty Measure, a joint project of the Stanford Center on Poverty & Inequality and the Public Policy Institute of California. Population and income data reflect 2018 and 2019, with CalEITC and Young Child Tax Credit eligibility based on 2019 credit parameters (adjusted for inflation as needed), adding filers who use Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to reflect the eligibility expansion implemented in 2020. Note that credit parameters for tax year 2021 are identical to tax year 2019 other than adjustment for inflation for CalEITC. Filers with no earnings who would become eligible for the Young Child Tax Credit under the governor’s and Legislature’s proposals are not included in these estimates. By understanding how many Californians in every county can benefit from these important credits, policymakers and community leaders can invest in proven policies that build on tax credits as tools to help Californians make ends meet and thrive in their communities.

Download the full report above to find out how many Californians are eligible for tax credits in your region.

This project has been made possible in part by a grant from Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

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  • 1
    Estimates are based on simulation of income taxes in public-use microdata from the US Census Bureau, American Community Survey, downloaded from IPUMS USA (University of Minnesota, www.ipums.org), using a tax simulation model developed for the California Poverty Measure, a joint project of the Stanford Center on Poverty & Inequality and the Public Policy Institute of California. Population and income data reflect 2018 and 2019, with CalEITC and Young Child Tax Credit eligibility based on 2019 credit parameters (adjusted for inflation as needed), adding filers who use Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to reflect the eligibility expansion implemented in 2020. Note that credit parameters for tax year 2021 are identical to tax year 2019 other than adjustment for inflation for CalEITC. Filers with no earnings who would become eligible for the Young Child Tax Credit under the governor’s and Legislature’s proposals are not included in these estimates.

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Executive Summary

California families want the ability to put food on the table, keep a roof over their heads, and help their children thrive in their classrooms and communities. For families who struggle to find good-paying jobs, face gender- and race-based discrimination, lack a high school degree, and experience mental illness or trauma, the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) program is critical. CalWORKs is California’s version of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and supports about 400,000 children throughout the state, providing their families with modest monthly cash grants while helping parents address barriers to employment and find work. Yet as this Issue Brief outlines, the federal program focuses on quickly pushing parents into paid employment over addressing longer-term barriers to work and resources needed to lead thriving lives. State and federal policymakers can change short-sighted, work-first approaches that undermine efforts to work with California families with low incomes and offer them the support they need.

State Policymakers Should Fully Commit to Helping CalWORKs Families Thrive

To continue to make progress toward making CalWORKs a program that truly serves families in
crisis, policymakers must commit to helping parents address barriers and reject a short-sighted
work-first approach that discourages critical counseling and education.

To achieve this goal, state legislators should:

  • Focus on providing holistic support to CalWORKs parents.
  • Direct the Department of Social Services to remove or revise the WPR penalty for counties.
  • Move away from work requirements.
“
These work requirements force Californians to “earn” public support and are based on racist and sexist beliefs that people of color take advantage of public assistance and that the unpaid caregiving that women traditionally provide is not real work.
”
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The purpose of the CalEITC is to reduce poverty among working Californians, but most people get less than $200 from the credit – far too little to achieve this goal. The credit for workers without dependents – who comprise 74% of CalEITC beneficiaries – ranges from just $1 to $255 per year. Plus, the majority of these workers likely don’t qualify for the federal EITC.

This helps explain why 35% of CalEITC-eligible working-age adults without dependents live in poverty – based on the California Poverty Measure – even after accounting for the tax credits and public benefits they get.

Establishing a much larger minimum CalEITC for all eligible workers would help Californians
who are paid low wages better meet basic needs. It would also help make the tax code more
equitable by strengthening a credit that largely benefits Californians of color.

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Nearly 1.7 million California children are at risk of falling back into poverty or deeper into
poverty this year because federal policymakers failed to extend the expanded federal Child Tax
Credit (CTC). Researchers already estimate that 3.7 million children nationwide fell into poverty
in January 2022.

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California could take action this year to reduce the harm to families who will lose the most money from the expired CTC.
”

Families with children will lose thousands of dollars they need for food, diapers, and other
basic needs because the CTC expansion ended. For example, a family with earnings of $15,000
and two children ages 0 to 5 will see their federal CTC drop from $7,200 to $1,875. A family with
lower earnings will lose even more money.

California could take action this year to reduce the harm to families who will lose the most
money from the expired CTC. Options include sending additional cash payments to CalEITC-
eligible families with children, expanding California’s Young Child Tax Credit to be more like the
federal CTC, and increasing CalWORKs grants.

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About this event

To ensure economic security for Californians, our public safety net needs to evolve, and that means getting serious about unrestricted cash support at the state level.

During this legislative cycle, there are many proposals to provide groups of Californians with direct cash support. From tax credit proposals to reforms in safety net programs, there are critical policy levers California can and should implement now so that Californians struggling to get by can have the resources needed to live and thrive in the Golden State.

What are the next steps that state leaders can take to make guaranteed income and its principles of unrestricted cash support a reality for California? Join our panel of policy experts as they answer this question and more.

This event is co-hosted by the Asset Funders Network, California Budget & Policy Center, and Philanthropy California.

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