Copyright Forbes
Despite increasing employee demand for paid leave, the U.S. remains among the only developed countries lacking a national paid parental leave law. So most U.S. employees still rely on voluntary employer benefits. Only about a quarter of all private sector workers in the U.S. have access to any amount of paid parental leave, according to the most recent data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2023. How can employees who value paid parental leave make informed job decisions? And how can companies seeking to recruit and retain top talent ensure that their paid leave policies remain competitive? The lack of employee benefits transparency has made both of these tasks challenging. To fill this information gap, Hillary Cookler, PhD candidate and researcher at UCLA Anderson School of Management, created an online database in 2024 with comprehensive comparator data on the paid parental leave policies at the 500 largest U.S. publicly traded companies. For the second year, Cooker has identified the top ten large U.S. companies on paid parental leave in an interview. The 2025 list is based on data for the 500 largest companies from S&P Capital IQ based on LTM revenue as of July 22, 2025. Large U.S. Companies Scoring Highest On Paid Parental Leave in 2025 Based on Cookler’s 2025 data, the ten large U.S. companies that rated highest on transparency and quality of paid parental leave for primary caregivers include, in alphabetical order: MORE FOR YOU Adobe Inc. Amazon.com, Inc. eBay Inc. Henry Schein, Inc. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company Lam Research Corporation NVIDIA Corporation S&P Global Inc. Salesforce, Inc. The Hershey Company Six of these companies are newcomers to the top ten list in 2025, while Adobe Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, Lam Research Corporation, and Salesforce, Inc. also made the top ten list in 2024. Paid Parental Leave Rankings Methodology The paid parental leave policies of each of the 500 largest U.S. companies were scored on both transparency and quality. Official sources were used whenever possible to determine a company’s policies, including corporate websites, press releases, and other official outlets. When official sources were unavailable, Cookler used unofficial sources, such as online forums, but only if multiple sources provided consistent information. Transparency assesses the information a company publicly discloses about its paid parental leave policy on its website. Quality assesses the length of paid parental leave that a company provides to full-time, U.S.-based, primary parents following the non-C-section birth of a child. Companies with websites that do not disclose whether they provide paid parental leave received the lowest transparency score of one. Companies that confirm on their website that they provide paid parental leave, but do not include policy details, received a score of two. Companies that confirm on their website that they provide paid parental leave and include policy details received the highest transparency score of three. Companies that do not provide any paid parental leave received the lowest quality score of one. If lack of transparency precluded a determination on paid parental leave, the company received a quality score of two. Companies with confirmed paid parental leave policies received scores from three to six based on their relative duration. In 2025, a total of 61 of the 500 largest U.S. companies received the highest scores possible for both transparency and quality, which was an increase from 51 companies in 2024. The top ten list includes the companies with the highest transparency score and the longest duration of primary parent leave. Key Trends On Paid Parental Leave Policies From 2024 To 2025 Comparing the year-to-year data from 2024 to 2025, Cookler identified four key trends on paid parental leave policies at large U.S. companies. 1. More Large Companies Offering Paid Parental Leave For Longer Duration Among the 500 largest U.S. companies, Cookler confirmed that at least 84% offered some amount of paid parental leave in 2025. This was an increase from 72% of large companies confirmed in 2024. The duration of paid parental leave offered for primary caregivers following the non-C-section birth of a child also increased among companies that have policies in place. The average amount of paid leave for primary parents increased from 11.1 weeks in 2024 to 11.8 weeks in 2025. The most common length of paid leave for primary parents remained steady at 12 weeks, which is anchored to the 12 weeks of unpaid leave required by the federal Family and Medical Leave Act. Cookler also found that the length of paid parental leave tends to be “expanding but rarely contracting” over time. Every large company that had a paid parental leave program in 2024 maintained its program in 2025. Only one large company decreased the duration of its paid leave for primary parents from 2024 to 2025, while 56 companies increased their duration by an average of about six weeks. 2. More Large Companies Offering Paid Leave To Secondary Caregivers The number of large companies that offer paid leave to secondary parents also increased. Cookler confirmed that at least 64% of the companies offered secondary parent paid leave in 2025, which was up from 58% in 2024. The duration of paid parental leave offered to secondary caregivers after the birth of a child also increased. The average amount of paid leave for secondary parents expanded from 6.9 weeks in 2024 to 7.4 weeks in 2025. 3. Large Companies Still Falling Short On Benefits Transparency While large companies have improved their paid parental leave policies over the last year, very little progress has been made on benefits transparency. Public disclosure of paid parental leave policies remains low among large U.S. companies. In 2025, only about half of the companies (51%) confirmed on their website that they offer any amount of paid parental leave, which was similar to 2024. Only 32% of the companies proactively share details about their paid parental leave policies, including duration and eligibility requirements. Large companies are particularly lagging in public disclosure on tenure eligibility for paid parental leave. This makes it difficult for prospective employees to determine which companies allow workers access to paid parental leave immediately upon hire, and which companies delay eligibility, often for a full year of employment. Only 12% of the large companies disclosed this critical information about their paid leave policies through official outlets. Cookler found that companies with higher revenue tend to be more transparent about their paid leave policies than companies with lower revenue. However, she also found that “there isn’t a strong relationship between transparency and policy quality.” In other words, companies with the best paid leave policies are not reliably those with the most transparency about their policy details. Cookler sees this disconnect as a lost business opportunity. Companies with high-quality paid parental leave programs that are not disclosed on their websites may lose the recruiting and brand ambassadorship benefits of their policies. In the absence of official company disclosures, prospective employees and other constituents are turning to the proliferation of third-party crowdsourced websites for information on paid parental leave policies. Yet Cookler observes that the information on third-party websites is often conflicting, inaccurate and incomplete. “Choosing not to publish a parental leave policy doesn’t avoid scrutiny, and rather, invites speculation,” said Cookler. “Third-party sites fill the gap with conflicting accounts shaped by uneven state programs and varied individual worker experiences. For companies competing on culture and talent, that ambiguity can come at a cost.” 4. Variation On Length Of Paid Parental Leave Is Decreasing But Remains High The low level of benefits transparency contributes to the lack of a standard length of paid parental leave, as companies have little data from which to benchmark their policies against competitors. In 2024, Cookler found that the length of paid leave for primary parents offered by the 500 largest U.S. companies ranged from zero to 52 weeks. Comparing year-to-year data, Cookler found that variation on the length of paid leave for primary parents decreased by a significant 10%, indicating some convergence toward a norm. The standard deviation of paid leave for primary parents decreased from 5.9 weeks in 2024 to 5.3 weeks in 2025. However, companies in a few sectors, including health care and information technology, showed the opposite trend, with increased variation on the length of paid leave. Despite an overall trend toward less variation among large companies on the length of paid primary parental leave, significant differences still exist, even within industries. So employees should not assume that all large companies have similar paid parental leave policies. The wide variations make it even more beneficial for companies with high quality paid parental leave to publicly disclose their policy details. Paid Parental Leave Use Overall, large U.S. companies have shown positive trends in the duration of their paid leave policies for both primary and secondary parents. However, the existence of a policy may not reflect actual use by employees.
