The push for mandated sick leave has been intense in recent years. But it appears it is paying off for workers. According to today’s U.S. Department of Labor Blog, on July 22nd the Bureau of Labor Statistics released some very interesting news about sick leave. Over the past year, the share of private industry workers with access to at least one day of paid sick leave increased from 61 percent to 64 percent. This is the highest on record. Further, the increase between 2015 and 2016 was almost entirely due to an increase in access among workers in low-wage occupations, that is, workers in occupations with average wages in the bottom 25 percent. This is the result, it appears, of the national momentum on mandated paid sick leave that has taken place in states and in localities. For example, the biggest increase in access to paid sick days over the last year was in the Pacific Census Division, which includes Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington state. In this set of states, the share of private industry workers with access to paid sick leave jumped up 12 percentage points – from 61 percent to 73 percent – between March 2015 and March 2016, the same period in which both California and Oregon implemented new statewide paid sick time laws.