Baby steps: Shared parental leave is growing in the US

Baby steps: Shared parental leave is growing in the US

4/9/23 8:00PM

Family time‍

In January, some 478,000 workers were taking parental leave in the US. That's the most since data first started being gathered in 1994, and although the figures for February and March are not as high, it’s a clear reflection of a steady trend — particularly among fathers. Indeed, paternity leave made up 16% of the total parental leave in 2022, up from 7% just a decade ago.

The Wall Street Journal, in its analysis of the data, points to the post-pandemic births boom, as well as the increasing share of Americans who have access to parental leave in their jobs, now up to 25% from 19% in 2019.

Baby steps‍

While access has improved — 396,000 American workers took parental leave each month on average in 2022, up from 270,000 some 20 years earlier — the US still lags surprisingly far behind other countries.

Unlike 63% of nations around the world, the US doesn’t offer a national paid parental leave program for fathers and it’s one of only 7 countries that has no mandated paid parental leave policy for women either.

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The most watched soccer match in US history got less than a third of the views the Super Bowl did

Between a top-spot finish in the group stage, a sweeping performance against Bosnia and Herzegovina in the round of 32, and the president’s controversial intervention, Monday evening’s USMNT game against Belgium had, to put it lightly, shaped up into a box-office clash.

And though the US players’ performance on the pitch might not have lived up to the high drama off it, American soccer fans certainly showed up. According to early estimates, the 4-1 defeat against Belgium was the most watched soccer telecast in US history, hauling some 40 million viewers on average across the coverage on Fox and Telemundo.

That may be a record tally in the US for the sport that much of the world calls some variant of “football” — besting the 36.2 million who tuned in to watch the team’s previous knock-out match — but it’s still peanuts in comparison to the sport that shares the same name in the States.

World cup viewers chart — Sherwood News

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