A recent article published in the Boletín Económico of the Bank of Spain considers what economic effects a worsening of health could have after a CIS barometer detected an increase in demand for health services. The same article deals with the increase in the absence of workers from their workplace due to illness, temporary incapacity 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 incapacity (IT hereafter) in Catalonia between 2009-2019, a period that embraced a deep crisis and a subsequent recovery. Greater absenteeism was highlighted in industry than in other sectors, and also greater absenteeism the larger the company. I have updated this information.
In 2022, in Catalonia, the time contracted and not worked by IT was on average 7.6 hours per month per worker, a figure quite higher than the 4.8 hours in 2009, and exactly double the lowest level achieved in period, which was 2012 and 2013). From this last level, the hours not worked by IT have not stopped increasing (slightly in 2020 and 2021, probably due to ERTE during the pandemic), to be in 2022 30% above the level of the last normal year that was 2019.
The updated data from 2009-2022 come to reaffirm some relationship between IT and economic cycle phases, the latter measured with GDP variations and unemployment levels. Despite appearing to be an extreme simplification, it is worth verifying, because it corresponds to a perception of business and also in case someone is encouraged to study it in depth. Applied to the Catalan case at hand, without considering the exceptionality of 2020 due to the pandemic, it is observed that:
1. IT varies in the same way as GDP varies. In a 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 to the maximum value indicated above.
2. The exact opposite happens with the unemployment rate: when unemployment rises, the IT falls, and when unemployment falls the IT rises, so that, in a graph of levels in the observed period, a kind of almost perfect scissors.
The behavior of IT in a period like the one I have considered puts a paradox on the table. Bearing in mind that the hours of contracted work have changed little, assuming that the level of health is constant (in 2020, due to the pandemic, it is an exception) and assuming that labor contingencies in the workplace are constant or decreasing, due to of better general management of occupational risks, 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.
