Three tests, and the one people fail is geography
29 CFR 825.110(a) is short. An eligible employee is an employee of a covered employer who has been employed for at least 12 months, has worked at least 1,250 hours in the 12 months immediately before the leave, and is employed at a worksite where 50 or more employees are employed by that employer within 75 miles.
All three. There is no partial entitlement and no sliding scale: fail one and the answer is none.
The first two are about you. The third is about where you happen to work, and it is the reason people at large companies discover they have no FMLA rights at all.
The regulation's own example is a construction company
This is not an edge case somebody invented to make a point. 29 CFR 825.111(a)(2) picks construction to explain the rule, and it is worth reading closely.
A company headquartered in New Jersey opens a site in Ohio and puts a mobile trailer on it as the site office. Workers hired locally who report to that trailer for their assignments have the Ohio site as their FMLA worksite. Job superintendents, foremen, engineers and an office manager sent from New Jersey keep New Jersey as theirs.
So two people can stand next to each other on the same job, employed by the same company, doing the same hours, and have different worksites, different headcounts and different legal rights. The locally hired hand is counted against a site of twenty and fails. The foreman sent from head office is counted against a company of four hundred and passes.
A firm of several hundred spread across twenty small sites may have almost nobody covered. That is the rule working exactly as written, and it is invisible to anybody who reads only the statute.
And 75 miles means 75 road miles
29 CFR 825.111(b): the distance is measured by surface miles, using surface transportation over public streets, roads, highways and waterways, by the shortest route.
Not a radius. Two locations sixty miles apart across an estuary with no crossing can be a hundred and forty miles apart by road, which puts them outside the test while a circle drawn on a map says they are comfortably inside it.
Twelve weeks of what, exactly, is the employer's choice
Everyone knows the FMLA gives twelve weeks. Far fewer know that twelve weeks in a 12 month period leaves the 12 month period undefined, and that 29 CFR 825.200(b) lets the employer pick from four options: the calendar year, any fixed leave year, the 12 months measured forward from first use, or a rolling 12 months measured backward from each use.
That choice can double the leave available, and the regulation admits it in as many words. Under either fixed method, it says, an employee could, therefore, take 12 weeks of leave at the end of the year and 12 weeks at the beginning of the following year. Twenty four consecutive weeks, entirely lawfully. The rolling method exists to close exactly that door.
So the first question to ask an employer is which method they use, and most employees have never been told. That question is worth asking rather than assuming, because 825.200(e) says that where an employer has failed to select one, the option that provides the most beneficial outcome for the employee will be used. A silent employer is not a neutral one. It has defaulted to whichever method suits you best, and it needs 60 days notice to everybody before it can change that.
Why nobody calculates the rolling method by hand
Under the rolling method your balance is whatever is left of twelve weeks after subtracting everything used in the previous twelve months. Entitlement therefore does not come back in a lump on an anniversary. It returns one day at a time, as each day of old leave falls out of the trailing year.
The regulation works its own example, and this tool reproduces it exactly rather than approximating it. Four weeks from 1 February, four from 1 June, four from 1 December: nothing more is available until the following 1 February, and then the employee would recoup (and be entitled to use) one additional day of FMLA leave each day for four weeks.
The consequence is the part that costs people their jobs. Somebody needing six weeks from that 1 February gets only the first four protected. A long leave partly funds itself as it runs, because entitlement recoups daily, and then it simply stops. The remaining two weeks are not FMLA leave, so the job protection is not there for them.
Thirteen states run their own, and this is not them
This works the federal position and nothing else. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia run paid family leave programmes of their own, several states have their own family leave statutes with lower thresholds than the FMLA, and a few require a single method of measuring the year that overrides the employer's choice. None of that is modelled here, because fifty sets of rules is not something one person can keep accurate, and a table nobody can maintain is worse than no table.
It also cannot tell you the last day of an entitlement with certainty. Your employer runs the calculation, holds the leave records, and decides what counts. A day of disagreement is a day of unprotected absence, so use this to know what to ask and what to check, and get the employer's own figure in writing before you plan around a date.
Common questions
Is FMLA leave paid?
No. The FMLA gives unpaid leave. What it protects is your job and your place on the group health plan, on the same terms as if you had kept working. Any money during the leave comes from somewhere else: a state paid family leave programme, a short term disability policy, accrued vacation, or your employer choosing to pay. None of those is federal law and none of them is guaranteed.
How many hours do I need to qualify for FMLA?
1,250 hours of service in the 12 months immediately before the leave starts. That works out at roughly 24 hours a week, so part time work is not excluded. The trap is what counts: the test uses hours actually worked under the Fair Labor Standards Act, so paid vacation and paid sick days do not count toward it, even though those same weeks do count toward the separate 12 month service test.
Why am I not eligible for FMLA when my company is huge?
Almost certainly the 50 employees within 75 miles test. Eligibility is judged at your worksite, not across the company, so a firm of several thousand spread across many small locations can have very few eligible employees. The regulation at 29 CFR 825.111 uses a construction company as its own example: workers hired locally to report to a site trailer have that site as their worksite, while superintendents and foremen sent from head office keep head office as theirs. Two people on the same job can have different answers.
Is the 75 miles measured as the crow flies?
No, and this catches people out. 29 CFR 825.111(b) says the distance is measured by surface miles using surface transportation over public streets, roads, highways and waterways, by the shortest route. So two locations 60 miles apart on a map can be well over 75 miles apart by road, which puts them outside the test even though a radius drawn on a map says otherwise.
What is the rolling 12 month FMLA method?
It is one of four ways an employer may define the 12 month period, and it is the strictest. Under it your entitlement at any moment is 12 weeks minus everything you used in the previous 12 months, recalculated daily. Entitlement does not return in a lump on an anniversary: it comes back one day at a time as each day of old leave drops out of the trailing year. So the day after you become eligible again you have one day, not 12 weeks.
Can I take 24 weeks of FMLA in a row?
On a calendar year or other fixed leave year employer, yes, and the regulation says so itself. 29 CFR 825.200(c) states that an employee could take 12 weeks at the end of the year and 12 weeks at the beginning of the following year. The rolling method exists specifically to prevent that, which is why the method your employer uses can be worth months of leave.
What if my employer has never told me which method they use?
Then 29 CFR 825.200(e) applies and you get the one that suits you best. Where an employer has failed to select a method, the regulation says the option that provides the most beneficial outcome for the employee will be used. An employer wanting to change to a different method afterwards has to give 60 days notice to all employees, and cannot do it to avoid the Act.
Does a public holiday use up FMLA leave?
It depends on whether you take the whole week. Under 29 CFR 825.200(h), a holiday falling inside a full week of FMLA leave has no effect and the week counts as a full week. If you are taking leave in increments of less than a week, the holiday does not count against your entitlement unless you were scheduled and expected to work it. A week when the whole business is shut, for a plant shutdown or a school holiday, does not count as FMLA leave either.