A recent article by the Bank of Spain discusses what economic effects a worsening of health could have after the CIS detected an increase in the demand for health services. The same article deals with the increase in the absence of workers from their workplace due to illness, temporary disability or accident, based on the EPAs of the INE.
A few years ago, based on the quarterly Labor Cost Survey, I collected the behavior of temporary disability (TI) in Catalonia between 2009-2019, a period that included a deep crisis and a subsequent recovery. Higher absenteeism was highlighted in industry than in other sectors, and also higher absenteeism the larger the company. I have updated that information.
In 2022, in Catalonia, the time hired and not worked due to IT was an average of 7.6 hours per month per worker, a figure considerably higher than the 4.8 hours in 2009, and exactly double the highest level. low reached in the period, which was in 2012 and 2013. From this last level, the hours not worked by IT have not stopped increasing (little in 2020 and 2021, surely due to the ERTE during the pandemic), to stand in 2022 30% above the level of the last normal year, which was 2019.
The updated data for 2009-2022 come to reaffirm some relationship between IT and the phases of the economic cycle, the latter measured with variations in GDP and with unemployment levels. Despite appearing to be an extreme simplification, it is worth verifying, because it corresponds to a perception of the business community and also in case someone is encouraged to study it in depth. Applied to the Catalan case at hand, without considering the exceptional nature of 2020 due to the pandemic, it can be seen that:
1. The IT varies in the same sense that the GDP varies. In the crisis phase, IT falls practically in parallel with GDP; In the phase of economic growth, IT also grows, although less than GDP until 2019. In 2022, with GDP increasing, but still at a lower level than in 2019, IT has continued to rise up to the maximum value indicated higher.
2. With the unemployment rate, it happens exactly the opposite: when unemployment rises, IT falls, and when unemployment falls, IT grows, so that, on a graph of levels, a kind of graph is drawn in the observed period. practically perfect scissors.
The behavior of IT in a period like the one I have considered brings to the table a paradox. Keeping in mind that the hours of contracted work have changed little, assuming that the level of health is constant (2020 due to the pandemic is an exception) and assuming that labor contingencies in the workplace are constant or decreasing, due to the best general management of occupational hazards, IT hours not worked would be expected to be either stable or declining, regardless of the evolution of the economy. And instead they are not.
