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Washington Paid Family & Medical Leave: Do You Qualify?
Washington's Paid Family and Medical Leave has been paying benefits since 2020, and a 2026 change widened who gets their job protected while out.
Check your Washington leave eligibility →- Family or medical
- Up to 12 weeks each
- Combined cap
- 16 weeks
- Pregnancy incapacity
- Up to 18 weeks
- Job protection (2026)
- 180 days, 25+
How the weeks work
You can take up to 12 weeks of family leave or 12 weeks of medical leave. Needing both in a year raises the ceiling to 16 combined, and if pregnancy causes an incapacitating health condition, up to 18. The benefit is a share of your wages, tilted so lower earners are replaced at a higher rate.
Eligibility for the benefit runs off hours worked in Washington over the qualifying period, not company size.
The 2026 job-protection change
Getting paid and keeping your job are separate here, and the job-protection side got broader in 2026: the tenure trigger dropped to 180 days, the hours requirement went away, and coverage now starts at employers with 25 or more employees, phasing down to smaller ones in the following years. Apply through the state at paidleave.wa.gov.
The only way to know where you land is to run your own numbers: your tenure, hours, employer size, and reason for leave all move the answer. Leavely's free assessment walks through it in a couple of minutes and shows both whether you'll be paid and whether your job is protected.
Start your free Washington leave assessment →