UAE Sick Leave: Why 90 Days Is Worth 30 Days of Pay

UAE sick leave gives you 90 days a year after probation, under Article 31 of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021. Only the first 15 are at full pay. The next 30 come at half pay, and the final 45 are unpaid. So the entitlement pays out as 30 days of wages, not 90.

That is one third of the headline. And the base it is paid on is full wage, not basic salary, which several published guides get wrong.

Key takeaways

• 90 days a year, after probation. Days 1 to 15 full pay, 16 to 45 half pay, 46 to 90 unpaid.
• The whole 90 days is worth 30 days of wages, or 33 percent.
• The half-pay tier is worth exactly as much as the full-pay tier. Both equal 15 days of wages.
• Pay is on full wage, including allowances, unlike gratuity which uses basic only.
• No paid sick leave during probation. Notify within 3 working days with a certificate.

How UAE sick leave actually pays

Article 31 grants up to 90 days a year, taken in one block or spread out. The allowance runs per service year, and it does not carry over.

One detail catches people out. Sick days are counted consecutively, so weekends and public holidays inside a continuous absence usually count against the 90. Only a more generous company policy changes that.

Tier	Days	Pay rate	Wages earned
First	1 to 15	100%	15 days
Second	16 to 45	50%	15 days
Third	46 to 90	0%	None
Total	90	Mixed	30 days

Read the last column rather than the second. Because the rate steps down twice, the money runs out long before the days do.

The FOUAE calculation

So price the 90 days. Fifteen days at full pay gives 15 days of wages. Thirty days at half pay gives another 15. The final 45 give nothing.

So the full entitlement is worth 30 days of wages across 90 days off, a replacement rate of 33 percent.

Two things fall out of that. The half-pay tier is worth exactly the same as the full-pay tier, despite running twice as long. And 30 calendar days of annual leave, paid in full, is worth the same in money as the entire 90-day UAE sick leave allowance.

The tiers are also cumulative across the year. For example, take 5 days in January and 10 days in March, and you have used the full-pay tier. So a fortnight off in June starts at half pay, not full.

Is UAE sick leave paid on full wage or basic salary?

Here, however, the published guidance splits. Some sites state that sick pay uses basic wage. Others say full wage, including allowances.

The law itself settles it. Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 defines “wage” and “basic wage” as separate terms, and Article 31 uses wage. So allowances count.

That matters more than it sounds. Take a package of AED 20,000 with basic set at AED 10,000. Fifteen days at full wage pays AED 10,000. Paid wrongly on basic, it pays AED 5,000.

Across the 45 paid days, the gap reaches AED 10,000 on a single illness. So check which figure your payslip used.

UAE sick leave during probation

Probation, meanwhile, is the hard cut-off. Article 31 gives no paid sick leave entitlement during the probation period, even with a certificate.

An employer may still grant unpaid days at its own discretion, and many firms do. But nothing in the law compels it.

So a new hire who falls ill in month two has no statutory pay protection at all. That gap sits alongside the notice and gratuity rules that also treat probation as a separate regime under UAE employment rules.

How to claim UAE sick leave

In practice, two duties attach. Notify your employer within 3 working days of falling sick. Then produce a medical certificate from an authorised health facility.

Miss either and the entitlement can be refused. The law also withholds pay where the illness results from the employee’s own misconduct, which in practice covers injury from intoxication or from a self-inflicted act.

One protection runs the other way. An employer cannot terminate you while you are on sick leave.

What happens when UAE sick leave runs out

Article 31(5) then sets the limit. If you exhaust the 90 days and remain medically unfit, the employer may lawfully end the contract.

That termination is not a dismissal for cause. End-of-service benefits remain payable in full, calculated on basic salary in the usual way.

So the 90 days is both a floor of protection and a ceiling on it.

The practical effect is a clear runway. A worker who falls seriously ill knows the job is secure for three months, and the employer knows the liability is capped at 30 days of wages. Neither side faces an open-ended position.

The counterargument worth taking seriously

Three objections carry weight. First, the 33 percent figure assumes someone uses all 90 days. Almost nobody does, and for a week’s flu the replacement rate is a full 100 percent.

Second, many UAE employers pay better than the floor. Company policies often extend full pay well past 15 days, so the statutory tiers may never apply to you.

Third, free zones differ. DIFC and ADGM run separate regimes, so a role there follows a different text entirely. Most other free zones, including DMCC, JAFZA and DAFZA, generally track the federal rules.

Still, the floor decides what happens when a contract is silent, and long illness is exactly when people discover what their contract says.

What UAE sick leave means for employers

Pay on full wage, not basic. This is the single most common error, and the gap compounds across a long absence.

Write the probation position down. The law gives no entitlement there, so your discretion should be a stated policy rather than a case-by-case decision.

Provision for the tiers, not the days. Ninety days of absence costs 30 days of wages plus the cost of cover, which matters for labour-intensive businesses.

Track the service year, not the calendar year. The allowance resets on the service anniversary rather than on 1 January, and payroll systems configured for a calendar year will overstate what is left.

What to watch next

Three markers carry real thresholds. First, whether MoHRE issues guidance clarifying the wage base. The volume of conflicting advice on full wage versus basic wage suggests it is overdue.

Next, whether the unemployment insurance scheme starts interacting with long-term sickness. At present the two sit apart. Last, whether free zones align with the federal tiers or keep their own, as they already do on Emirati employment support.

So the short answer is this. UAE sick leave runs to 90 days a year, it pays out as 30 days of wages, and it is calculated on your full package rather than your basic salary.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Sources

Sources: UAE Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 on the Regulation of Employment Relations, Article 31, which sets the 90-day allowance, the 15, 30 and 45 day pay tiers, the three-working-day notification duty, the medical certificate requirement, the exclusion during probation, the misconduct exclusion and the Article 31(5) termination right; the same decree-law’s definitions of “wage” and “basic wage”, which settle the pay-base question; Talentera GCC statutory sick pay guide and web.hr sick leave guidance for practice and free zone treatment. Published guidance conflicts on whether sick pay uses full wage or basic wage; FOUAE follows the statutory definitions. The 30-days-of-wages total, the 33 percent replacement rate, the equivalence between the two paid tiers and the AED 10,000 package comparison are FOUAE calculations from those provisions. This is general analysis, not legal, employment or medical advice.

Founders of UAE (FOUAE) is an independent, digital-first business publication covering the founders, companies and economy of the United Arab Emirates. Follow FOUAE on Instagram and LinkedIn.