Workers with a decade of experience in California state government have been through tough times before.

The state instituted furloughs during the Great Recession that lasted five years, requiring workers to take off about three weeks per year without pay.

While the furloughs took a bite out of their incomes, the cost-saving measure added to workers’ banks of paid leave. Now, as state offices stay open while the coronavirus spreads, some tenured employees may draw on weeks or months of accrued leave rather than going in to work.

The leave balances, which represent billions of dollars in liabilities for the state, could become a factor in decisions about how California manages its workforce and associated costs amid a pandemic and a likely economic downturn.

At the end of 2018, the average California state worker had about 42 days of accrued leave, according to the California Department of Human Resources’ most recent data. The figure includes only leave that is paid upon retirement or in a leave buyback program — it does not include sick leave.

That’s down from 62 days of accrued leave in 2012, according to the department. During the furloughs, many state workers used the unpaid days when they otherwise would have used vacation days or leave time. As a result, their banks of paid leave grew during the recession.

Senior employees likely are carrying leave balances above the average, while newer employees likely have little leave available, said Nick Schroeder, an analyst with the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

“For the average state employee and certainly for the more senior employees, it’s fair to say that they have a significant amount of leave on the books that they could use and not work but be paid for a significant amount of time,” Schroeder said.

The leave balances also represent a liability that could increase the state’s budget pain if it sinks into another recession.

Retirement rates accelerated among state workers during the Great Recession. If that happens again, departments will have to pay for workers’ accumulated leave in lump-sum payments upon their retirements. The payouts in many cases can be hundreds of thousands of dollars, a costs that hits small departments hard, Schroeder said.

California caps the leave most of its workers may carry, but the limits often have gone unenforced, according to a 2013 Legislative Analyst’s Office report.

Most private employers and many public employers cap vacation banks at 20 days to 40 days, according to the report. California’s cap is 80 days for most employees. Leave balances for more than 23,000 workers exceeded the cap in January 2013, according to the report.

The numbers have dropped since then, as evidenced in CalHR’s 2018 data, but the recent data doesn’t have the level of detail of the 2013 report. The department declined to comment for this story.

The accruals amounted to a $3.9 billion liability for the state in 2012, and the number was growing, according to the report. The value of the leave grows over time because it’s paid at whatever rate the worker is earning when they cash it out, rather than when they added it to their leave bank.

The state has tried to reduce the leave banks. Its main tool for doing so has been to offer leave buyback programs in which workers may exchange up to 80 hours of unused leave for cash. The option varies according to workers’ union contracts.

As more people in California test positive for COVID-19, the disease from coronavirus, workers in many departments are pressing the state to expand use of administrative time off, a type of paid leave that the state sometimes offers in emergencies or when work facilities are unavailable.

Departments are taking guidance from human resources officials in how they manage workers, including circumstances under which employees may telework, use their leave or be considered for administrative time off.

So far, CalHR has directed departments to use it only as a last resort, when non-critical employees are not eligible for telework and can’t be reassigned to another critical job. In those cases, CalHR has directed departments to provide administrative time off regardless of available leave.

For workers without banked vacation or sick leave, the guidelines mean difficult decisions.

Paulina Vasquez, a California Lottery sales representative, said last week that she had been trying to save her vacation days for a family reunion later in the year, yet worried she was risking her own health and the health of others by continuing to go to work.

Vasquez has since started teleworking.

Workers with banked leave face a different decision.

State workers may choose each year whether they want to accrue a combination of vacation days and sick leave or whether to take a smaller amount of more general annual leave.

Vacation and annual leave may be cashed out. Sick leave typically can’t be, although it may be counted as service credit for the purposes of calculating state workers’ pensions when they retire.

This story was originally published March 27, 2020 at 5:00 AM.