Workplace Compliance With the Law: The Case of the Family and Medical Leave Act

Using the 2008 National Study of Employers to analyze employers’ compliance with the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), we show that prior studies have overestimated compliance due to the treatment of missing values and incomplete definitions of the FMLA. Using partial identification methods, we estimate that FMLA compliance among firms with 50 or more employees in the private sector is at least 54.3% and at most 76.8%. We also look at organizational characteristics that predict compliance, noncompliance, and nonresponse. This analysis suggests that firms with missing data are more similar to noncompliant than compliant firms and that nonresponse may indicate organizational defiance of policy.