2023-08-28 21:24:10
The corona pandemic has been overcome, the last protective measures expired in the spring of this year. Nevertheless, sick leave among employees in Germany reached a record level in the first half of 2023. This is reported by the three largest German statutory health insurance companies in terms of insured persons.
First, the DAK published its half-year statistics, according to which the sick leave among its members rose to 5.5 percent and thus to the highest value since the survey began in 2013. On average, 55 out of 1000 employees were on sick leave every day. In the same half of the previous year, the figure was 4.4 percent. Half of the 2.4 million insured workers reported sick at least once by the end of June – a value that is usually only reached at the end of a year.
Shortly thereafter, the Techniker Krankenkasse (TK) also reported a high. Your policyholders were therefore on sick leave for an average of 9.5 days in the first six months of the year. In the previous year it was 9.1 days at the same time. In 2019, the last year before the pandemic, it was 7.8 days.
A similar picture is also emerging at Barmer, according to an inquiry by the FAZ: “We have had an increase in sick leave since the beginning of the year. In the first half of 2023, there were around 1,100 sick leave reports per 1,000 employees entitled to sick pay. That corresponds to an increase of around 30 percent compared to the same period last year,” says CEO Christoph Straub. There has been a significant increase in respiratory diseases in particular. This is also shown by the data of the DAK report.
One reason is the new electronic reporting procedure
According to labor market experts, sick leave actually decreases in economically difficult times. Straub has an explanation for the fact that this is rising to such record levels now that the German economy is in crisis. “There are various reasons for the increased number of reports of incapacity to work. One of them is the introduction of the electronic reporting procedure, which reflects the actual sick leave more precisely,” says the Barmer boss.
Since the beginning of this year, employers have been able to retrieve the certificate of incapacity for work electronically (eAU) directly from their employees’ health insurance companies as soon as they have reported sick. As a result, shorter absences due to illness are now also recorded by the health insurance companies. In the case of absences of up to three days, employees were not previously obliged to submit an existing certificate of incapacity for work. However, the effect on the number of sick leave cannot be clearly quantified, says Straub.
Since the pandemic, people have been taking sick leave for longer
Markus Beier, Federal Chairman of the German Association of General Practitioners believes that the numbers can be explained mainly, but not exclusively, by the new reporting procedure. “Another reason is certainly that we saw a significant increase in general infections last winter.” These are catch-up effects as a result of the lifted hygiene protection measures.
In addition, the way people deal with colds has changed during the pandemic, and people have become more careful. This could lead to employees taking longer sick leave on average. The fact that a higher percentage of people are on sick leave could in turn be due to the transmission effect of the new notification procedure.
“Another effect is that, in our experience, mental illnesses and back pain disorders have been on the rise for years,” says Beier. This particularly affects sectors that suffer from a shortage of skilled workers, such as nursing, social and educational professions.
In nursing, sick leave is particularly high
This is also suggested by the data from the DAK report. According to this, the occupational group “non-medical health, body care and wellness occupations, medical technology” has the highest sick leave rate of 7.4 percent. The federal manager of the German professional association for nursing professions, Bernadette Klapper, sees the nursing staff in a vicious spiral: “On the one hand, there is the work-related stress caused by shift work, physical effort and mentally demanding work, and the shortage of skilled workers increases the stress considerably due to uncertain duty rosters and the additional moral Injury” – this means the subjective feeling of no longer being able to meet the needs of the patient. The resulting absences from illness would in turn have to be compensated for, which increases the burden even more.
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According to the DAK report, sick leave has not only increased in the nursing professions. However, it is not yet clear whether employers will have to compensate for more days lost by their employees in the future. “It is still too early to derive a possible trend at this point,” says Barmer CEO Straub. Markus Beier from the General Practitioners’ Association sees it similarly: “It’s like looking into a crystal ball: If we get a high wave of influenza, it can look similar next year. If this does not happen, it is quite possible that the level of sick leave will drop again, as far as this is independent of the reporting procedure.”
Jens Baas, CEO of the FAZ Techniker, expressed slight hope of a prompt decline: In June 2023, there were already fewer sick leave due to colds among TK-insured persons than in June of the previous year. “Perhaps these are the first signs of a downward trend,” says Baas.
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