Sickness rates: High sickness rates in Germany – these are the reasons

New finding on record sickness rates in Germany: According to the German Medical Association and a new study, the reason is not frequent sick leave, but rather the new digital sick note and increased infections. Medical President Klaus Reinhardt said in Berlin that, in his opinion, it “doesn’t happen on a large scale” that people just play sick. According to the Federal Statistical Office, employees in Germany were on sick leave for an average of 15.1 working days in 2023.

For the first time, there was a sudden increase in days of absence from 2021 to 2022 – by almost 40 percent, as the new study by the health insurance company DAK-Gesundheit shows. Reinhardt explained that in statistics, sick notes suddenly increased with the introduction of the electronic sick note (eAU) in 2021. It replaces the “yellow note” from the doctor, the sick note on paper.

Study: reporting effect 60 percent

Today, 100 percent of all sick notes are recorded, said the medical president. “We didn’t have that until the introduction of the eAU because the insured person (…) often didn’t send away the piece of paper that went to the health insurance company, but only the one that went to their employer.”

According to the DAK study on Germany’s record sickness rate, the reporting effect – depending on the diagnosis – is around 60 percent or more. The survey is available to the German Press Agency (dpa). “A third of the additional days of absence since 2022 have also been due to increased waves of colds and corona infections,” DAK-Gesundheit continues.

Reinhardt is also currently observing this in a Bielefeld district practice, where he has usually only worked once a week since taking office at the chamber. He reported on his mission this week: “There were a lot of people there.”

Another “artificial” effect

Among them were many “who needed a certificate of incapacity for work due to a relatively banal effect”. The patients came on the first day “because the employers requested it.” This effect was “artificially made,” said Reinhardt. Overall, many people went to the doctor even for minor illnesses. Many companies require a certificate from there on the first day of illness, said Reinhardt.

The day before, the Allianz CEO initiated a debate about sick leave in Germany. This is statistically high in international comparison. In an interview, Bäte spoke out in favor of abolishing continued payment of wages on the first day of illness. There was then a hail of criticism, for example from the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB). The DGB warned of follow-up costs and the risk of infection and accidents due to the increasing number of cases of people coming to work sick.

In the Federal Republic – unlike in some other countries – continued payment of wages has been in effect for decades from the first day of illness. The CDU social wing also warned against changing this.

DAK CEO Andreas Storm called for the “growing culture of mistrust” in the world of work to be curbed. “Our study shows that neither telephone sick leave nor calling in the blue are the real reasons for the sharp increase.” The statistical effect caused by the eAU and cold waves played the central roles.

According to statistics from DAK-Gesundheit, well over half of those insured by DAK had at least one sick note in 2023, and there were an average of 20 days of absence per person for the year as a whole.

Be more careful with infections

According to Reinhardt, it should also be noted that since the corona pandemic, more people have generally taken sick leave for infectious diseases. “The aspect of not being infected has taken on a different quality in the two or three years of lockdown and avoiding infection.”

If a company has particularly high levels of sickness, “you have to go into the company and see what the corporate culture is like,” Reinhardt continued. “From a purely medical background, one would say: If someone is sick, they are sick – if they are not able to work, then they are not able to work.”

The Left demands intervention from Scholz, Merz and Habeck

Against the background of the debate, Left leader Jan van Aken called on Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), Union Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz (CDU) and Green Party lead candidate Robert Habeck to intervene. They should make it publicly clear that they “clearly reject” the demand for a restriction on continued payment of wages in the event of illness, said van Aken in a letter available to the dpa.

Sick leave behavior was also closely examined by the Leibniz Center for European Economic Research (ZEW): Germany “probably has one of the highest levels of absenteeism in the world.” Different sources showed a sharp increase since 2022. The main explanations included Covid-19, more infections, changing absenteeism behavior and improved electronic data transmission. “There is strong evidence that most of the increase in absenteeism is due to better statistical reporting of absenteeism.”

Billions in costs for companies

The employer-related German Economic Institute (IW) found in a survey that the costs of continuing to pay wages had recently doubled within 14 years. In 2023, employers would have had to raise 76.7 billion euros to continue paying their sick employees’ wages.