Archive:Weekly absences from work
Data extracted in July 2020
Planned article update: October 2020
Highlights
During the last week of March 2020, weekly absences from work reached 41.2 million people in the EU, an increase of 30.4 million people since the first week of the month.
Weekly absence in Italy rose from 1.6 to 8.2 million from the end of February to the end of March 2020.
To respond to the need for a more thorough analysis of the labour market in the situation of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, Eurostat developed new experimental indicator - “Weekly absences from work”. The indicator represents the number of temporary absent from work employed persons in the surveyed reference week.
The following article is focused on the weekly absences from work and complements the article Absences from work - quarterly statistics, part of the publication Labour market in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Full article
Weekly absences over the time
As shown in Figure 1, weekly absences from work in EU usually have peaks in the 33rd and 52nd week of the year, corresponding to mid-august and late December. However, from the second week of March (11th since the beginning of 2020), associated with the first confinement measures against the spread of COVID-19 pandemic taken by the governments, weekly absences sharply increased. People absent from work were 10.8 million at the beginning of March (week 10, 2020), their number increased to 14.7 million in the week after and doubled its size in mid-March (week 12, 2020) when reached 33.1 million. At the last week of the month (week 13, 2020) weekly absences from work amounted for more than three quarters of the last year’s peaks from mid-August and late December and reached 41.2 million, or increased with 30.4 million people since the first week of the month (week 10, 2020).
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Source: Eurostat (lfsi_abs_w)
Figure 2 compares absences from work in EU in the first 13 weeks of 2020 to 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, 2020) had been very similar, or even smaller, compared to the previous years. However, the last three weeks of March 2020 (weeks 11 to 13, 2020) differentiate significantly. Absences from work in the 11th week of 2020 were with 3.9 million more compared to the previous week and with one third (35.7 %) more compared to the average of the same period for the last five years. In the following two weeks, absences continued to increase and tripled this average. In weeks 12 and 13 of 2020 (mid to late March), people absent from work were respectively with 21.4 and 28.5 million more, compared to the same period in the previous years.
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Source: Eurostat (lfsi_abs_w)
Weekly absences, sex differances
Figure 3 aims to describe the development of absences from work for men and women by comparison March 2020 to March 2019 (weeks 10 to 13, 2019 and 2020). During the first week of March (week 10, 2020), absences from work recorded a decrease in comparison the same period in 2019. The decrease was equal to 16.1 % for men and 14.9 % for women. The situation for both sexes started to differ after. During the second week of March (week 11, 2020) absences from work increased with 41.3 % for men and 26.9 % for women. The increase in the next two weeks was even larger. Women absent from work in the last two weeks of March (week 12 and 13, 2020) were three times more in comparison to the absent women during the same period of 2019. More precisely, their number amounted for 6.2 and 6.0 million respectively for the last two weeks of March 2019, compared to 17.3 and 20.8 million for the same weeks of 2020. Absent from work men increased three times in the 12th week of 2020, compared to the relevant week in 2019, or their number rose from 4.6 to 15.9 million. The largest increase was recorded for men in the last week of March (week 13, 2020), when the number of absent from work men was five times more, compared to the corresponding period from the previous year, or 20.4 million compared to 4.3 million.
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Source: Eurostat (lfsi_abs_w)
Looking at the breakdown by sex of the weekly absences from work in EU in the first 13 weeks of 2020, it is visible that, with exception of the first week, women outnumbered men (Figure 4). This could be seen most prominently in late February and the beginning of March (weeks 9 and 10, 2020) when women were with around 50 % more than men were. However, after this period, the numbers of men and women among absent from work began to equalize and by the end of March (week 13, 2020), women surpassed men with much smaller margin - 2.4 %.
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Weekly absences, country differances
All EU Member States for which data are available experienced a rise of weekly absences from work in the last few weeks of March 2020. However, this rise did not start from the same week for all countries. If Figure 2 is reproduced per each country, would be noticeable that in the majority, weekly absences started to increase steeply from the second or third week of March (weeks 11 or 12, 2020). Slovakia and Spain are given as examples in Figures 5 and 6.
In Slovakia (Figure 5), with the exception of the beginning of January and late February (weeks 1 and 8, 2020), absences from work during the first 13 weeks of 2020 had been following the pattern from the previous five years. From the second week of March (week 11, 2020) on, their number began to increase significantly, both in comparison to the preceding weeks since the beginning of 2020 and to the average of the corresponding weeks of 2015-2019. At the end of March 2020 (week 13, 2020), 1.0 million people were absent from work in Slovakia, compared to the beginning of March (week 10, 2020) this number rose by 0.9 million. For contrast, the average number of absent from work people in Slovakia in the last week of March for the previous five years had been 91.3 thousand.
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Source: Eurostat (lfsi_abs_w)
In Spain (Figure 6), although the weekly absences were higher since the beginning of 2020, their pattern had been following those of the last five years until the second week of March (week 11, 2020). From mid-March (weeks 12, 2020), absences began to record a major spike. In the second week of March (week 11, 2020), 1.1 million people were absent from work in Spain, this number increased four times by the next week and reached 4.5 million. The rise continued. At the last week of the month (week 13, 2020), absences accounted for 6.0 million people. For comparison, the average of absences for the same period for the last five years had accounted for 1.2 million.
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Source: Eurostat (lfsi_abs_w)
Two Member States differentiate sensibly form the others in terms of the starting point of the increase of absences. Namely, the Netherlands and Italy.
The Netherlands is shown in Figure 7. In this country, the number of people absent from work saw an increase later in time compared to the other Member States, only in the last week of March (week 13, 2020). Absences from work in the Netherlands since the beginning of 2020 had been following closely the pattern of the last five years, with the exception the second week of January (week 2, 2020). Nevertheless, at the end of March (week 13, 2020) weekly absence from work increased with 65.3 % compared to the previous week and doubled its size in comparison to the average for the same period in the previous years. Absent from work people in the Netherlands reached 1.1 million in the last week of March 2020, or with 0.6 million more compared to the average of the 13th week in the preceding five years.
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Source: Eurostat (lfsi_abs_w)
The situation in Italy differed significantly from the Netherlands. People absent from work in Italy began to increase exponentially their number already since the end of February 2020 (Figure 8). At the mid-February (week 8, 2020), 0.9 million Italian people were away from their jobs. This number almost doubled in the following week, reaching 1.6 million, and continued to increase until the end of March (week 13, 2020), when 8.2 million people were absent from work in Italy, or with ten times more compared to the average of the absences for the 13th week in the last five years.
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Source: Eurostat (lfsi_abs_w)
More complete information on the countries, for which the majority of data are available, could be found here.
Although all countries experienced an increase of absences from work in March 2020, for some the increase was sharper than for the other. If we compare the average absences for 10th to 13th week during the period 2015-2019 with the same weeks of 2020, we would notice that the increase among the Member States was larger in Greece and Cyprus; from 0.3 to 3.2 million (Greece) and from 0.04 to 0.3 million (Cyprus). The smallest increase could be observed in Finland (from 0.9 to 1.1 million), followed by the Netherlands (from 2.5 to 3.2 million).
Source data for tables and graphs
Data sources
All figures in this article are derived from 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.
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 EU Labour Force Survey Explanatory Notes
Context
The COVID-19 virus 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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