The Leave Index

What it is

A ratings database for US employer parental leave, built around non-birthing parents. Other projects treat the birthing parent as the default and non-birthing leave as a footnote. This one flips that, because non-birthing leave is where policies quietly fall apart and where almost nobody is looking.

How it works

Search a company and you get a letter grade from A+ to F, a 52-week strip that shows the leave at a glance, and a note on what the number does and doesn't cover. Pick your state from a 13-state overlay and a calculator estimates your own leave and pay. Browse by editorial collection or by sector, and share any view by URL.

The data follows a few strict rules. What the employer says outranks scattered reviews, and conflicts are shown, not hidden. Ranges enter at the conservative lower bound. Nothing is guessed, so "not disclosed" is recorded as data. And a maternity-only figure never fills a non-birthing parent column. That last rule catches the most errors: some policies were off by as much as fourteen weeks because the headline number only applied to a primary caregiver.

What the data shows

Expanding from a curated list to the full S&P 500 dropped the median disclosed leave from 12 weeks to 8. The original list leaned toward companies that publicize good policies, the same bias every "best parental leave" roundup inherits.

The sector split is starker. Consulting sits at 16 weeks and tech at 12. Manufacturing, energy, retail, consumer goods, healthcare and hospitality all land at 6 or below. Transportation offers 2. Paid paternity leave is a white-collar benefit, and now there are 396 companies' worth of data to prove it.

Under the hood

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