20 days of absence per employee
Study: Record sickness rates led to recession
January 26, 2024, 2:11 a.m
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The fact that Germany slipped into recession last year is often attributed to the global crises. A study by the pharmaceutical industry comes to a different conclusion: without the record high level of sickness, the economy would have grown in 2023. On average, each employee was absent from work for 20 days.
In 2023, sick leave in Germany exceeded the record level of 2022, pushing the German economy into recession. This is reported by the “Rheinische Post” with reference to a study by the Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (VFA): “Significant loss of work led to considerable losses in production – without the above-average sick days, the German economy would have grown by almost 0.5 percent,” it says accordingly in the as yet unpublished study. As it stands, the economy shrank by 0.3 percent. “If sickness rates had not been so high again, around 26 billion euros would have been generated additionally in 2023. Instead of a mild recession, there would have been an increase of almost half a percent in 2023,” write the authors Claus Michelsen and Simon Junker, according to the report .
In addition, health insurance has lost five billion euros due to the enormous sickness absence in the last two years, and the sickness absence has also led to a reduction in tax revenue of 15 billion euros.
The individual sectors contribute differently. According to the study, around 70 percent of production losses occur in vehicle construction, mechanical engineering, metal, electrical, pharmaceutical and chemical industries due to the size of the respective industries. The sickness rate was highest in metal production at 6.8 percent, the paper writes.
More colds and mental illnesses
At the end of the year, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy had already calculated economic damage of 32 to 36 billion euros due to the loss of work alone.
According to a statement from the health insurance company DAK-Gesundheit, in 2023 each employee was absent from work for an average of 20 days. After evaluating its own insured data, the fund came to a sickness rate of 5.2 percent. The DAK explained that the main reasons for the many absences due to illness were respiratory diseases such as colds, bronchitis and flu. There has also been an increase in mental illnesses. Overall, the sickness rate among those insured by the fund had already risen to 5.5 percent in 2022. This is the highest value since the analyzes began 25 years ago. The development is “alarming” for employers. In previous years, sickness rates had been in the region of 4 percent.