Archive:Absences from work - quarterly statistics
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The absences from work can be classified in two groups: at one side, the planned, desired absences (e.g. annual holidays) and at the other side, the unplanned, undesired absences (e.g. illnesses, lay-offs). Whereas the first type of absences could be easily “absorbed” by the companies as their effect could be mitigated by for example rescheduling the work priorities or recruiting temporary staff; the second type could lead to disruption of the production cycles and lead to material losses to both employers and employees.
It is worth noting that sometimes this distinction could be not so easy to make. Usually, annual leaves are guaranteed by the legislation, which may lead some employers to encourage their employees to take holidays when the enterprise is facing economic difficulties. This means that holidays sometimes may mask actual lay-offs.
The beginning of 2020 was marked with an outbreak of worldwide pandemic - COVID-19, which led almost all governments around the globe to take restrictive measures, of which the social distancing had a pivotal role. To prevent the spread of the virus and to ensure distancing of people, many businesses were temporarily shut down and many employees were confined at their homes. Whereas worker protection laws may imply that employment, specifically of employees, will not be affected, at least in the beginning of the pandemic, one may expect over time a sharp rise of absences from work, which fall under the aforementioned second category of undesired, unplanned absences.
This article aims to depict the absences from work in the European Union as a whole and in the different EU Member States. The article is a part of the online publication … alongside with the articles …
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Sharp increase in the number of absences from work in the first quarter of 2020
Over the last fourteen years, until the end of 2019, the total number absences from work varied from 14.6 to 18.8 million (Figure 1, left axis). Over this period, a couple of sharp peaks stand out. Namely, in the first quarter of 2015, absences increased by 0.9 million, compared to the preceding quarter, and reached 17.9 million and in the first quarter of 2009 when absences accounted for 17.4 million employed persons or increased by 1.4 million in comparison to the fourth quarter of 2008. In the first quarter of 2020 absences from work recorded unprecedented levels since the beginning of the time series in terms of both increases in comparison to the previous quarter and absolute number. At the beginning of 2020 22.9 million people were absent from their jobs, 4.3 million more compared to the last quarter of 2019 and 4.9 million more compared to the first quarter of 2019.
Looking at the reasons of absence (Figure 1, right axis), we may deduce that the rise from the last quarter of 2019 to the first quarter of 2020 is primarily due to the increase of lay-offs. The levels of lay-offs had been relatively stable in the period before the fourth quarter of 2019, with the exception of the first two quarters of 2009 when they consecutively rose with 0.3 million per quarter, and their number never exceed 0.5 million after 2014. In the first quarter of 2020, 2.3 million people were absent from work because of lay-off, an increase of 2.0 million in comparison to the last quarter of 2019. The second-largest increase is observed among the people having “other” reason for being absent - from 3.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 4.9 million in the first quarter of 2020, or a rise of 1.6 million. People being absent from their work due to the other two reasons considered in Figure 1 also rose since the end of 2019 - the number of people on holidays enlarged from 10.9 to 11.5 million, or with 0.6 million, and people being absent due to own illness or disability increased from 4.1 to 4.2 million, or with 0.1 million.
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Figure 2 compares overall absences from work as a percentage of the employment in the last two quarters (fourth of 2019 and first of 2020). At EU level, absences accounted for 9.7 % of employment at the end of 2019 and reached 12.0 % at the beginning of 2020, an increase of 2.3 p.p. Among the Member States for which data are available, the highest rates of absences from work in the first quarter 2020 were observed in France (18.1 %), Sweden (16.2 %) and Austria (15.0 %) and the lowest rates in Romania (2.5 %), Malta (3.3 %), and Bulgaria (4.4 %). All EU Member States except Finland experienced a rise in this rate. Most prominent increases could be observed in Italy (from 7.6 to 13.4 %), Cyprus (from 7.5 to 12.8 %) and Greece (from 3.3 to 8.3 %).
Men and women in employment were not equally absent from work. Among all Member stated except Cyprus shares of absences from work were higher among employed women than among employed men (Figure 3). This difference was most sizable in Lithuania, where the share of absences among women was more than two and a half times larger than among men - 17.1 % for women compared to 6.5 % for men. Following Lithuania, the gap between the absence rates for men and women was most prominent in Hungary (5.5 % absent men, 13.2 % absent women), Poland (5.1 % absent men, 12.1 % absent women) and Latvia (5.0 % absent men, 12.0 % absent women).
Looking at the shares of men and women among the absences, there was a prevalence of women in all Member states, with Cyprus as the only exception, where 52.1 % of those absent from work were men. Women outnumbered men the most in Romania, where 72.8 % of people absent from their jobs were women, followed by Lithuania and Latvia, where women accounted for respectively 72.5 % and 70.5 % from all absent from work persons.
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