Last year, nearly a million workers did not go to their posts for a single day, representing a total cost of nearly 37,000 million
Absenteeism has skyrocketed “worryingly” in the early months of 2022, despite Covid-19 not having the same health impact as when it broke out in 2020. Thus, the percentage has risen to the all-time high of 7.5%, even above that of 2020, after falling to 6.6% in 2021, according to the XI Adecco Report on Healthy Company and Absenteism Management published this Wednesday, showing that until 2017 this level was never higher than 5%.
If we extrapolate the 2021 percentages to the number of employees (16.1 million), that equates to 937,900 employees who will not work for the whole year, one in 16. Or the same thing, over 1,700 working hours were lost, which is had a total cost to the economy as a whole of almost EUR 37,000 million, which is equivalent to 3.1% of GDP.
It should be noted, however, that the concept of absenteeism included in this report includes any absence from work, whether justified as sick leave or maternity and paternity leave, as unjustified, so not all absence can be eliminated, according to Adecco.
In any case, absenteeism due to a common illness or a non-occupational accident has deteriorated in 2021 compared to 2020 in terms of number of processes, costs and average incidence, according to estimates by the Association of Mutual Insurance Companies for Accidents at Work (AMAT). More specifically, the total number of withdrawals for the social security system increased by 13.99%, resulting in a total cost of 106,302 million euros, an increase of 16.04%. In addition, the calculation in terms of goods and services that were no longer produced and supplied comes to 87,439 million euros, 7.27% of last year’s GDP.
And in the first four months of 2022, the number of absenteeism procedures rose by more than 46%, almost half a million more cases. For this reason, without taking into account the opportunity costs, the cost of this absenteeism for workers protected by the mutual insurance companies collaborating with social security amounts to 4,254.62 million euros, which is 591.20 million more than in 2021.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
