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Minnesota Paid Family & Medical Leave: Do You Qualify?
Minnesota's Paid Leave program went live at the start of 2026. It applies to every employer in the state, and it comes with job protection built in.
Check your Minnesota leave eligibility →- Medical or family
- Up to 12 weeks each
- Combined cap
- 20 weeks / year
- Employer size
- 1+ employee
- Job protection
- After 90 days
Twelve weeks each, twenty combined
You can take up to 12 weeks of medical leave for your own serious condition, or up to 12 weeks of family leave to bond or care for a relative. If a single benefit year brings both, the two together are capped at 20 weeks rather than a full 24.
Contributions and claims both started on January 1, 2026, funded through employer and employee premiums, so what qualifies you is your earnings history rather than a length-of-service test.
Who qualifies
The program covers employees at businesses of every size. There's no small-employer carve-out from the benefit. The right to your job back attaches after 90 days with the employer. Apply through the state at pl.mn.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 Minnesota leave assessment →