Sick pay
Sick pay for part-timers and people with two jobs
Since April 2026 a few hours a week are enough for SSP. How the daily rate works on short weeks, and why each employer pays separately.
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Part-time employees have always been entitled to Statutory Sick Pay on the same footing as full-timers, but until 5 April 2026 anyone earning less than the lower earnings limit of £125 a week got nothing. That condition went on 6 April 2026: now every employee or agency worker on the payroll qualifies from the first day of sickness, at the lower of £123.25 a week and 80% of normal weekly earnings. On a short week the weekly rate is divided by the days you normally work, so a two-day worker receives half the weekly rate for each day off. With two or more jobs, each employer assesses SSP on the earnings it pays you and pays its own SSP; you can be off sick from one job and still fit for the other, in which case only the first employer pays. The 28-week limit also runs separately in each job.
Sick pay when you have two jobs
SSP a week from both employers
£195.25
| From job A | £123.25 |
| From job B | £72.00 |
| If both jobs were one job | £123.25 |
Only if you are unfit for both jobs; fit for one, you are paid SSP by the other only.
Short weeks, worked through
The table applies the 2026 rules to four part-time patterns. The weekly rate is the lower of the flat rate and 80% of earnings; the daily rate is that weekly rate divided by the days worked; a day off pays one daily rate.
| Pattern | Weekly earnings | Weekly SSP | One day off |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 days a week, 7.5 hours a day at £12.71 | £190.65 | £123.25 | £61.63 |
| 3 days a week at £150 | £150.00 | £120.00 | £40.00 |
| 4 days a week at £400 | £400.00 | £123.25 | £30.82 |
| Weekends only, 2 days at £180 | £180.00 | £123.25 | £61.63 |
The first line shows the effect of the reform most clearly: fifteen hours at the National Living Wage of £12.71 an hour is £190.65 a week, below the old limit, and now carries SSP of four fifths of that from the first day.
Days you would have worked
SSP is paid for qualifying days only, the days your contract or agreed rota required you to work. A part-timer who works Monday and Tuesday and is ill from Wednesday to Friday loses no qualifying days and gets no SSP for that week, even with a fit note, because there was nothing to be paid for. Ill from Monday to Wednesday, the same person is paid for two days. Where working days are not fixed, the employer and employee can agree which days count. Without such an agreement, regulation 5 of the 1982 SSP regulations takes the days on which it is agreed you were required to work; if it is agreed there were none in a week, the Wednesday counts; and with no agreement at all, every day except those on which none of the employer’s staff work. Keeping rotas and messages showing which shifts you were due to work is the simplest protection, and a written agreement on your normal days, made before any sickness, settles the question for good.
Two jobs, two employers, two calculations
Each employment is a separate contract, and SSP attaches to each. The employer in job A ignores job B entirely: its own earnings set its 80% cap, its own pattern sets the daily rate, its own records count the 28 weeks. The consequence, shown in the calculator above, is that two modest jobs can produce more SSP together than one job paying the same total, because each is capped at the flat rate separately. The reverse also happens: if you are too ill for a physically demanding job but able to do a desk job, only the first employer pays SSP, and you keep working, and earning, in the second.
Holiday follows the same logic: each employer owes 5.6 weeks pro rata to your days with them (part-time holiday).
Zero-hours and casual work
On a zero-hours contract you are often a worker rather than an employee, but SSP covers anyone on the payroll as an employed earner who has done some work under the contract, which includes most casual workers. The practical question is which days you would have worked. If shifts were already offered and accepted for the days you were ill, they are qualifying days. If no work was scheduled, there is nothing to pay. Since April 2026 a single lost shift is enough to trigger SSP, where it used to fall inside the waiting days. Whether you are an employee or a worker matters for other rights; employment status sets out which.
Checking your own case
Enter each job separately in the Statutory Sick Pay calculator: the earnings from that job, its working days and your dates of sickness. The total for each job is what that employer should put on your payslip. If one of them applies an old rule, such as three waiting days or a refusal because you earn under £125, the guide to the April 2026 changes gives the legal references to show them.