Over the last year, the share of U.S. private industry workers with access to at least one day of paid sick leave increased from 61 percent to 64 percent, the highest on record, according to an analysis of recently released data by a Labor Department economist. Over the past decade, the share of private sector employees with paid sick leave increased by 7 percentage points. The increase between 2015 and 2016 was almost entirely due to an increase in access among workers in the lowest 25th percentile of wages, and may be evidence that new paid sick leave laws in states such as Oregon and Washington are beginning to make a difference, the economist wrote. Workers in high-wage occupations are still 2.2 times more likely to have paid sick days than workers in low-wage occupations.