Despite the lower incidence of covid, absenteeism has risen to historic highs

The rate of absenteeism has risen again in the first month of 2022, "worryingly", despite covid-19 not having the same impact on health as it did in 2020. According to the XI Adecco report on Healthy Company and Absenteeism Management, published Wednesday, this rate rose to 7.5% in the first months of 2022, even though it was at 6.6% in 2020.

If you multiply the 2021 percentages with the 16.1 million employees, it equals one in 16 workers not working during the year. The same thing happened: more than 1,700 hours were lost. The total cost of work for Spain's economy was almost 37,000,000,000 euros. This is equivalent to 3.1% GDP.

However, it should be noted that absenteism is any absence from work, regardless of whether it's justified as sick or maternity leave. Adecco also explains that not all absenteism can be eliminated.

According to AMAT estimates, sick leave for common illness and non-occupational accidents increased in 2021 relative to 2020. This was due to an increase in the average incidence, cost, and number of processes. The increase in withdrawals for the Social Security System was 14%. This resulted a total cost of €106,302 millions, an increase by 16%. The calculation of goods and services not produced or provided reached 87,439 millions euros, which is 7.27% of the GDP last year.

In the first four months 2022, there were almost half a million more sick leave cases than usual. This is why the cost of absenteeism caused by sick leave for workers covered by Mutual Insurance Companies that collaborate with Social Security, taking into consideration the opportunity cost, stands at 4,254.62 millions euros. That's 591.20 more than 2021.