Archive:Weekly absences from work
Data extracted in November 2020
Planned article update: January 2021
Highlights
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To respond to the need for a more thorough analysis of the labour market situation during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, Eurostat developed a experimental indicator “Weekly absences from work”. This indicator focuses on employed persons who are temporarily absent from work in a reference week.
This article presents the main results from this indicator and complements the article Absences from work - quarterly statistics. Both articles are part of the publication Labour market in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The current version of the article focuses on the first two quarters of 2020 (week 1 to 26). In January 2021, the article will be reviewed and data on the third quarter of 2020 (week 27 to 39) will be added.
Full article
Weekly absences from work spiked in April 2020
In the EU, weekly absences from work usually peak in weeks 1, 33 and 52 of the year, corresponding to early January, mid-August and late December (see Figure 1). However, after the first week of March 2020 (week 10), weekly absences sharply increased because of the first confinement measures against the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic taken by governments. In detail, weekly absences steeply increased from 13.2 to 45.4 million from early to late March 2020 (weeks 10 to 13). The increase continued over the first and second week of April 2020 (weeks 14 and 15), when 45.6 and 47.8 million people respectively were absent from their jobs. For a benchmark, the number of people absent from work in the second week of April represents more than 90 % of the previous peaks in late December 2019 (week 52, 2019) and early January 2020 (week 1, 2020), when 51.9 and 50.2 million people respectively were absent from work.
Figure 2 compares absences from work in the EU in the first 26 weeks of 2020 with the average of the corresponding weeks in the period 2015-2019. It is visible that the number of weekly absences in January, February and early March 2020 (weeks 1 to 10) was similar compared with the previous years. Even though the number of absences for week 1 of 2020 (30th of December 2019 - 5th of January 2020) was much higher than the average over 2015-2019, it was still below the maximum (so far) for this week, which was recorded in 2015 (50.2 million in 2020 versus 54.2 million in 2015).
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Source: Eurostat (lfsi_abs_w)
From the second week of March 2020 (week 11), absences from work increased substantially. In this week, the number of people absent from work was with 4.7 million more compared with the previous week (week 10, 2020) and with almost two thirds more (+64.6 %) compared with the average number of absences for this week during the previous years (average 2015-2019). This growth reached much more significant dimensions by the end of the month. When every week is compared with the previous one, absences in weeks 12 and 13, corresponding to mid and late March 2020, went up by 18.1 and 9.5 million respectively. In April 2020, the increase of the number of absences continued, although not so rapidly as for the previous two weeks, with +0.2 million for the first week of April (week 14) and +2.2 million for the second week of the month (week 15). In the following week (week 16), the number of people absent from work slightly declined, with -0.3 million. Nevertheless, the number of weekly absences from work was exceptional in comparison with the previous years in that week (week 16) as well as in the last week of March and the first two weeks of April 2020 (weeks 13-15). In these four weeks (weeks 13-16), the number of absences in 2020 was around three and a half times more than the average over 2015-2019. The gap was the widest for the first week of April (week 14), when absences from work amounted to 45.6 million in 2020, compared with 12.5 million over the previous years.
From mid-April 2020 (week 16), absences from work took a downward path. However, their decrease was not as rapid as their increase. On average, weekly absences decreased by 4.3 million per week until mid-May 2020 (week 20), when their number reached 26.5 million. This number was, nevertheless, still more than twice as the average number recorded for the 20th week of the previous half-decade, which was 11.6 million.
During the following five weeks (weeks 21-25), the number of people absent from their jobs continued to decline. A more moderate decline of 2.2 million absences per week, on average, took place this time. Absences from work reached 15.5 million in mid-June 2020 (week 25), which was their lowest level after their expansion in March 2020. However, this number was still 1.8 million more compared with the average number of absences for the 25th week during 2015-2019, and also 2.3 million more compared with early March 2020 (week 10).
In the last week of the first half of 2020, namely the week spanning the end of June (week 26), the number of people absent from work increased again, this time with 1.9 million in comparison with the previous week, and reached 17.4 million. For reference, the average number of absences for the same week during the previous years was 15.6 million.
Impact of the COVID crisis on the gender distribution among weekly absences
In this section of the article, the focus is on the ratio between men and women absent from work in the first 26 weeks of 2020. Figure 3 also presents the comparison with the average of this ratio for the last five years (2015-2019). A ratio of 100 % suggests a gender equilibrium, whereas a ratio above this threshold implies that men were preponderated among people absent from work (a ratio below 100 % corresponds to an over-representation of women among people absent from work).
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“Average 2015-2019” refers to the average of the ratios, not the ratio between the average values for men and women.
Source: Eurostat (lfsi_abs_w)
The "men to women" ratio for the first week of 2020 was 107.0 %, slightly more than the 2015-2019 average for the same week, which was 106.7 %. In other words, there were 7.0 % more male than female absences from work in the first week of 2020, while there were on average 6.7 % more male absences for the same week over the years 2015-2019.
Up to early March 2020 (week 10), the "men to women" ratio for 2020 went down, closely following the average for the previous five years. More precisely, from 107.0 % in the first week of 2020, it dropped to 82.9 % in the second week of the year. Hereafter, it continued to gradually decline and reached its lowest point for 2020 in early March (week 10), when the "men to women" ratio accounted for 66.5 % meaning that men were with one third less than women (-33.5 %) among the group of people absent from work in week 10.
From the second week of March 2020 (week 11), alongside with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the "men to women" ratio started to increase steeply. The development of this ratio in March 2020 was the following: from 66.5 % in its beginning (week 10) to 96.5 % by its end (week 13). In the first week of April 2020 (week 14), the number of men exceeded the one of women among people absent from work. This "men to women" ratio for this week amounted to 102.6 %. Indeed, during this week, marked by one of the greatest peaks of total absences in 2020 so far, the number of men absent from work was 23.1 million, whereas the corresponding number for women was 22.5 million. From the first week of March 2020 to the first week of April 2020 (weeks 10 to 14), male absences rose by 17.9 million, compared with an increase of 14.6 million for women. For reference, the average number of men and women absent from work for week 14 during the previous five years was 5.3 million and 7.2 million respectively, corresponding to an average "men to women" ratio of 73.6 %.
After its peak in early April 2020 (week 14), the "men to women" ratio decreased to levels below 100 % and gradually began to decline over the weeks up to the end of June 2020 (week 26), when it reached 76.2 %. Nevertheless, for the whole period from week 11 to week 26 2020, "men to women" ratio was above the levels of its average over the previous five years. Most prominently, from mid-March to end April 2020 (weeks 12 to 17), the "men to women" ratio was more than 20 percentage points (p.p.) higher than the average for 2015-2019. The greatest difference could be observed for week 15: the "men to women" ratio for this week in 2020 reached 98.9 % while its average for this week during the previous five years only amounted to 69.4 % (29.5 p.p. difference).
In order to analyse the “men to women” ratio more objectively, it should be noted that men were more represented among the EU employed population than women during the second quarter of 2020. The “men to women” ratio for people in employment in Q2 2020 corresponds to 116.8 %. This fact might explain, at least partially, the increase of this ratio for the weekly absences during the same period.
Disparities among countries according to the impact of COVID on weekly absences from work
The objective of this part of the article is to illustrate the situation in regards to weekly absences from work across European countries. A separate graph is presented for every country with information available for more than 50 % of the weeks in the period 2015-2020. Each graph contains information about the levels of absences from work for every calendar week from the first to the 26th of 2020, as well as the average of the number of absences recorded for the same sequence of weeks during the period 2015-2019. The graphs with their accompanying data could be found 
here. As the timing and strictness of the COVID-19 containment measures differ between countries, it can be expected that the effects on weekly absences would vary from week to week and from country to country.
Cyprus, Romania and Greece were the EU Member States recording the largest increase in the number of absences from work. In these countries, the number of employed people who were absent from work during the first half of 2020 was the most persistently higher than the number recorded over the previous years (average 2015-2019). The increase of weekly absences was the highest in Greece. Over ten weeks during the first half of 2020, from mid-March (week 12) to the penultimate week of May (week 21), the number of people absent from work in this country was between 10 and 19 times more compared with the corresponding weeks in the previous years (see Figure 4). The situation was the most severe at the end of March and during May 2020 (weeks 13, 19 and 21). In the 13th, 19th and 21st week of 2020, 1661 thousand, 966 thousand and 709 thousand respectively of employed Greeks were absent from work, compared with 90, 52 and 41 thousand on average for the corresponding weeks over the previous years.
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Source: Eurostat (lfsi_abs_w)
Focusing on the development in Greece during 2020, the number of weekly absences from work grew from 69 thousand in mid-February (week 8) to 1661 thousand at the end of March (week 13), which was the highest level during the first half of 2020. Hereafter, the number of absences dropped to 177 thousand at mid-June 2020 (week 25). It is worth noting that, during the first half of 2020, the number of weekly absences reached its highest volume over five weeks, and its lowest, after this peak, for twelve. Then, in the last week of June 2020 (week 26), absent from work people increased again, this time by 111 thousand compared with the preceding week, and reached 288 thousand.
Despite that the number of absences from work in Greece towards the end of the observed period, i.e. June 2020, was lower in comparison with most of the weeks in March, April and May of the same year, it was still substantially higher than the number recorded in the previous years. Especially in the second week of the month (week 24, 2020), when absences accounted for nearly five times the average number recorded for this week over 2015-2019 (209 thousand compared with 44 thousand).
Among the EU countries, following Greece, with much of a distance, the number of weekly absences from work increased the most severely in Cyprus and Romania. In the first half of 2020, these two countries recorded during March, April and May (Cyprus: week 12 to 22; Romania: week 13 to 22), at least five times more absences from work compared with the average of the corresponding weeks during the previous years. And even ten or more times over five weeks during these months. This was the case in Cyprus in the last two weeks of March and the beginning of April (week 12 to 14, 2020), as well as during mid-April and the beginning May (week 16 and 19, 2020), when the number of weekly absences was around ten to thirteen times higher than the number in previous years. And in Romania, during most weeks of April (week 14 to 16 and 18, 2020) and the beginning of May (week 19, 2020), when absences from work exceeded their values from the past with around ten to seventeen times.
All Member States with available data experienced an increase in the number of weekly absences over the first half of 2020 in comparison with the previous years. However, this increase was slimmer in some countries, for example in Finland and the Netherlands. The example of the Netherlands is shown in Figure 5.
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Source: Eurostat (lfsi_abs_w)
In the Netherlands, the number of people absent from work during the first half of 2020 increased rather moderately in comparison with the other Member States. Moreover, after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, it was substantially higher than the number recorded over the previous years for a relatively shorter period. This was the case only in the five weeks from the end of March to the penultimate week of April 2020 (week 13 to 17). Most noticeable, in the three weeks from the end of March to the second week of April 2020 (week 13 to 15), when the number of employed people who were not at their work was 1 088, 1 116 and 1 071 thousand, respectively, compared with more than a half less on average for the previous five years, namely 445, 454 and 430 thousand. After its peak in the first week of April 2020 (week 14; 1 116 thousand), the number of weekly absences in the Netherlands began to decline and towards the end of April 2020 (week 18), it returned to close proximity to its average values from the past (average 2015-2019).
Source data for tables and graphs
Data sources
All figures in this article are derived from the European labour force survey (EU-LFS).
Source: The European Union labour force survey (EU-LFS) is the largest European household sample survey providing mostly quarterly and annual results on labour participation of people aged 15 and over as well as on persons outside the labour force. It covers residents in private households. Conscripts in military or community service are not included in the results. The EU-LFS is based on the same target populations and uses the same definitions in all countries, which means that the results are comparable between countries.
European aggregates: EU refers to the sum of EU-27 Member States. If data are unavailable for a country, the calculation of the corresponding aggregates is computed with estimates. Such cases are indicated.
Coverage: Data are not available for Sweden for the whole time series (2015 – Q2 2020), as well as for Germany for 2020 (see below).
Country note: Due to technical issues with the introduction of the new German system of integrated household surveys, including the Labour Force Survey (LFS), the figures for Germany for the first and second quarter of 2020 are not direct estimates from LFS microdata, but based on a larger sample including additional data from other integrated household surveys. A restricted set of indicators has been estimated and used for the production of the LFS Main Indicators. These estimates have also been used in the calculation of EU and EA aggregates, and are published for some selected indicators (estimates for Germany are flagged as p – provisional, and u – unreliable). For more information, see here.
Definition: The notion of temporary absence from work refers to situations in which a period of work is interrupted by a period of absence. This implies that persons are generally to be considered as having been temporarily absent from work and therefore employed if they had already worked at their current activity and were expected to return to their work after the period of absence. Persons without work who had made arrangements to take up paid employment or to engage in some self-employment activity at a date subsequent to the reference period, but who had not yet started work, are not to be considered as temporarily absent from work. For more information on absences from work, please consult pages 22 to 28 from the EU Labour Force Survey Explanatory Notes
Five different articles on detailed technical and methodological information are linked from the overview page of the online publication EU Labour Force Survey.
Context
The COVID-19 pandemic hit Europe in January and February 2020, with the first cases confirmed in Spain, France and Italy. COVID-19 infections have now been diagnosed in all European Union (EU) Member States. To fight the pandemic, EU Member States have taken a wide variety of measures. From the second week of March, most countries closed retail shops apart from supermarkets, pharmacies and banks. Bars, restaurants and hotels have also been closed. In Italy and Spain, non-essential production was stopped and several countries imposed regional or even national lock-down measures which further stifled the economic activities in many areas. In addition, schools were closed, public events were cancelled and private gatherings (with numbers of persons varying from 2 to 50) were banned in most Member States.
The large majority of the prevention measures were taken during mid-March 2020 and most of the prevention measures and restrictions were kept for the whole of April and May 2020. The first quarter 2020 is consequently the first quarter in which the labour market across the EU has been affected by COVID-19 measures taken by the Member States.
Employment and unemployment as defined by the ILO concept are, in this particular situation, not sufficient to describe the developments taking place in the labour market. In this first phase of the crisis, active measures to contain employment losses led to absences from work rather than dismissals, and individuals could not search for work or were not available due to the containment measures, thus not counting as unemployed.
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