Why Two Big Companies Just Cut Paid Family Leave

The Upshot|Why Two Big Companies Just Cut Paid Family Leave

Not long ago, employers were competing over who could be most generous in providing family-friendly benefits — things like paid parental leave, subsidized fertility treatments and even pet insurance. Paid leave was expanded to people who hadn’t gotten it before, like fathers and hourly workers.

Now, some companies are reconsidering.

The share of U.S. employers offering paid family leave dropped two percentage points in 2025, to 31 percent, according to an annual survey by the Society for Human Resource Management.

At least two large companies, Deloitte and Zoom, recently said they were cutting back the level of family leave they offered. At Deloitte, the cuts apply to people in certain administrative roles, and it is also reducing vacation time and eliminating financial support for adoption, surrogacy and I.V.F. for those employees.

The move could particularly affect female workers, analysts said, because paid family leave has been shown to help them stay employed.

Because Deloitte’s cuts are for support staff, as opposed to accountants and consultants, they also target jobs that generally pay less and that are predominantly done by women, noted Joan Williams, founding director of the Equality Action Center at U.C. Law San Francisco.

Although cutbacks to family leave don’t seem to be widespread, it’s part of a larger trend of scaling back from what one human resources publication called the golden age of benefits, at least at certain employers. Cuts have included nice-to-have perks, like laundry or snacks, and policies that helped caregivers juggle family demands and work, like remote work.