On average, full-time employees missed 9.3 days of work due to illness or accident last year, an increase of 34% compared to before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Between 2010 and 2019, average annual absences remained relatively stable between 6.2 and 7.2 days, the SonntagsBlick and SonntagsZeitung newspapers reported on Sunday.
Even in the two coronavirus years of 2020 and 2021, workplace absences were lower than last year, at 8.1 and 7.5 days respectively.
Both sexes contributed to the upwards trend, with women logging 10.2 sick days last year – compared with 8 in 2019 – and men 8.9, compared with 6.8 in 2019.
Younger people were meanwhile more likely to be absent: 15-24-year-olds were most affected, missing 10.4 days – a significant increase of around 60% since the pandemic. Absences among 25-34-year-olds also rose by almost 50% to 9.2 days.
In contrast, among 45-54-year-olds the number of absences increased by “just” 30% to 8.9, while the 55-64-year-olds – who previously were top of the absent list – managed to reduce their number of sick days from 10.2 to 9.6.
The highest absence levels were recorded in manual and service jobs such as construction, hospitality, and healthcare. Scientific roles, as well as the banking/insurance sector and farming sector saw the least amount of sick days.