Death Is Inevitable. Bereavement Leave Is Not: Baby Boomers and the U.S. Workforce

Introduction

The United States is on the brink of a demographic transition that will increasingly shape the experience of grief in the workplace. As the Baby Boomer generation ages into its final decades of life, death will become an increasingly common feature of American working life, not only for older adults themselves, but for the millions of workers who will grieve them. Yet bereavement leave policy in the United States is not legally mandated, leaving workers unprotected during one of the most predictable and disruptive human experiences.

Background

Death is a universal and inevitable human experience, which means that grieving is guaranteed to each of us. When someone close to us dies, the grief journey is catalyzed. As this research illustrates, grieving takes a significant toll on our lives; it has the potential to alter our executive functioning, workplace performance, our overall physical and mental health, and impacts our social dynamics, among a plethora of other facets. Although grieving the loss of a loved one can be a lifelong experience, the immediate needs of grievers are considerable and are largely going unmet in the workplace. It is common practice in the U.S. for employers to provide employees with three days of unpaid leave following the death of an immediate family member; however, this leave is entirely discretionary and not legally required, leaving many grieving Americans without any assured support for this inevitability.¹

The lack of bereavement leave policies in America does not demonstrate their unimportance; in fact, the opposite; the absence of a uniform, effective, and adequate bereavement leave policy has led to 94% of grieving employees reporting difficulty concentrating at work after their loss, and 78% of grieving employees not feeling supported in their workplace.²

Bereavement Leave Fundamentals

In the United States, no federal laws require employers to provide their employees with bereavement leave (BL), which is a type of paid or unpaid leave following the death of a family member.³ The purpose of bereavement leave is currently defined as: allowing time for grieving, managing funeral and memorial arrangements, traveling if necessary, and addressing legal and personal responsibilities associated with a death.⁴ Existing federal legislation, such as the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), explicitly excludes bereavement leave as an allowable reason to take unpaid leave from work.⁵ Bereavement leave is not mandated by federal law, and California, Illinois, Maryland, Oregon, and Washington are the only states that have enacted specific BL laws for either public and private sector employees, or both. Therefore, for the vast majority of the country, bereavement leave policies are up to the discretion of the employer, who is not required to provide any bereavement leave to their employees.⁶ 

Federal Level Legislation

At the federal level, there is no legislation mandating bereavement leave in the private sector, and it’s not uniformly required throughout the public sector either.⁷ Employers retain full discretion over whether to offer leave, the amount of time granted, and whether the leave is paid. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which sets regulations such as minimum wage for employees in the public and private sectors, does not require employers to provide paid bereavement leave.⁸ This lack of a federal standard places the onus on individual states and employers to define protections for grieving employees.⁹

Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the primary federal leave policy in the U.S., does not allow bereavement as a covered category.¹⁰ FMLA provides up to 12 weeks of job-protected, unpaid leave for certain medical and family caregiving needs, including the birth of a child or serious illness of a family member, but explicitly excludes leave following the death of a loved one.¹¹ have strived to adapt or expand bereavement leave policies that would go beyond the federal baseline established by FMLA. However, states cannot amend the federal FMLA itself, and the original statute does not cover grief-related absence.

Standard Practices 

Although BL practices vary widely, some common themes have emerged among currently offered bereavement leave policies across the nation. Most bereavement leave policies are centered around the death of immediate family members, including spouses, children, parents, and siblings. In some cases, employers may extend eligibility to include extended family, such as grandparents, grandchildren, in-laws, and other members of non-immediate family.¹²

The absence of federal bereavement leave policies in America, combined with the lack of existing state-level mandates, results in companies across the nation not being obligated to provide paid or unpaid time off from work for employees when they experience a loss.¹³ There is no uniform standard for the duration of bereavement leave in the U.S. Typical employer-provided BL ranges from one to five days, depending on the employer’s Human Resources (HR) policy and on the employee’s relationship to the deceased.¹⁴ Bereavement leave may be a formal employee benefit offered by the company, or employers may offer unpaid leave, or permit the use of accrued sick or vacation time (commonly referred to as Paid Time Off: PTO) to cover bereavement periods. The variation in leave policies results in significant disparities among grieving Americans, especially for low-wage, contract, or hourly workers who may be unable to afford unpaid time off.¹⁵

The Baby Boomer Generation

Furthermore, this is a timely issue. America is entering an unprecedented chapter where it’ll have its largest-ever senior citizen population. Over 73 million Baby Boomers (Boomers), or one in five Americans, are living in the United States as of this writing.¹⁶ The entirety of the Baby Boomer generation will be over the age of 65 by 2030, accounting for more than 20% of Americans.¹⁸ This inevitably means that America will also experience a surge of deaths. By 2029, over 12 million Baby Boomers are estimated to die, with a decline of nearly 50 million more projected in the subsequent 10 years.¹⁹

This predictably indicates a strain on the U.S. workforce, with the immediate family members of these Baby Boomers likely needing to access bereavement leave, upon their passing, at unparalleled rates. This strain indicates an unprecedented impact on our workforce when the younger generations (likely the children, grandchildren, next-of-kin, etc., of the Baby Boomers) need to access bereavement leave, and for some, to act as executors or trustees for the deceased person’s estate.²⁰ This demographic data provides us with key insights to enable us to take proactive measures now to be prepared for the impacts of this natural decrease pressure; where rising mortality outpaces births.²¹

Baby Boomer Mortality Projections Based on Demographic Data 

To estimate how many Baby Boomers will be approximately the U.S. average age of death (78.4 years) or older by 2029,²² this analysis utilizes the demographic data available at the time of this paper’s publication. The Baby Boomer generation includes individuals born between 1946 and 1964, spanning 19 birth years.²³

The age distribution of Baby Boomers in 2029 includes the youngest Boomers (1964) being 65 years old and the oldest Boomers (1946) being 83 years old.²⁴ Thus, the cohort will range from 65 to 83 years in the year 2029. Individuals 78 or older in 2029 were born between 1946 and 1951, covering 6 birth years. The total number of Baby Boomers, as of the publication date of this paper, that are projected to be alive in 2028 is approximately 60 million.²⁵

To estimate the 78+ year old subpopulation, this projection treats all birth year cohorts of Boomers as being equal in size:​                              6/19 ≈ 31.6%

Further, to adjust for higher mortality among older birth years, the oldest third of Boomers will likely represent 20–25% of the surviving population by the late 2020s.²⁶

Population Category	Calculation	Result (millions)
Total Boomer population in 2029	60 × 100%	60
Proportion 78+ if all cohorts equal	60 × 31.6%	19
Mortality-adjusted proportion	60 × 20–25%	12–15

 

Therefore, the final estimate for how many Baby Boomers, as of the publication date of this paper, are projected to be age 78 or older by 2029, after adjusting for higher mortality among older Boomer cohorts, is approximately 12 – 15 million Boomers.

 

Contextual Note on Life Expectancy

As of 2026, the U.S. life expectancy at birth is 78.4 years.²⁷ This is an average, not a fixed age of death, and many individuals survive beyond this age, including those within the Baby Boomer cohort. 

Recommendations

The need for bereavement leave reform is particularly urgent in the context of the aging Baby Boomer population, which will significantly increase mortality rates and the demand for estate administration. Estate executors or trustees require additional bereavement time due to the extensive and time-intensive responsibilities they carry, which average more than 570 hours per estate.²⁸ Standard bereavement leave of one to five days is insufficient when considering it takes 16 to 42 months to settle the average estate.²⁹

Sustainable bereavement leave policies accommodate these well-documented needs while preserving employer protections, enabling employees to fulfill obligations and return to work effectively. Job-protected and paid bereavement leave is essential to prevent grief from being compounded by the risk of employment loss, and so employees don’t have to solely rely on unpaid time or other forms of earned leave to manage bereavement needs.

Conclusion

America’s demographic data and trends are evidence-based, providing a concrete foundation for population projections. This enables policymakers to design proactive and anticipatory bereavement leave policies, rather than reactively respond once workforce and economic effects are already felt. Collectively, these factors underscore the need for policies that are informed by those who have experienced the death of a loved one, in combination with subject-matter data. Grief will inexorably affect us all and our current bereavement landscape does not reflect this reality.

To read Cassidie’s full bereavement leave research report and other griefy and policy publications, please visit: cassidiecarmen.com