Never before have so many people called in sick as in the first quarter of this year. Absenteeism due to illness has risen to 6.3 percent, Statistics Netherlands reported on Friday. This means that for every thousand days to work, 63 were absent. That is the largest number the statistical office has ever measured. Absenteeism due to illness is increasing in all sectors, but it is highest in healthcare.
In the healthcare sector, employees were absent 8.9 percent of the time in the past quarter due to illness. A year ago, that number was still 6.3 percent, which was the highest percentage of all branches at the time.
Within health and welfare care, absenteeism was highest in nursing and childcare. Personnel were absent 104 and 100 days out of a thousand, respectively.
Absenteeism was lowest in financial services at 3.4 percent.
Many stay at home because of corona
The reasons why employees stay home sick cannot be deduced from the figures, but Statistics Netherlands and the knowledge institute TNO conduct a survey every year into the complaints among people who have last absenteeism. This shows that last year 8 percent of the Dutch stayed at home due to a confirmed corona infection and 12 percent due to complaints that they linked to corona, but without testing it. In 2020, 2 percent stayed at home due to a positive test and 29 percent with complaints.
In healthcare, the number of employees who stayed at home because of a positive corona test was the highest at 11 percent.
Burnout is also a reason for reporting sick
In addition, 30 percent of Dutch employees in 2021 indicated that they stayed at home with flu or cold complaints. 6 percent suffered from burnout symptoms or psychological complaints.
The number of days absent is considerably higher than in the first quarter of last year. At that time, the absenteeism rate was 4.8 percent.