US - absence rates and lost worktime data

Part 2 - Analysis of Absence rates

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)

Update Date: March - 2023

Data:

Country: USA

Period: Yearly data from 2002 onwards.

Data Source (BLS): U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics - Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey

Link to the latest data release: HOUSEHOLD DATA ANNUAL AVERAGES. Table 46: Absences from work of employed full-time wage and salary workers by age, sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity.

Absences are defined as instances when persons who usually work 35 or more hours a week worked less than 35 hours during the reference week for one of the following reasons: Own illness, injury, or medical problems; child-care problems; other family or personal obligations; civic or military duty; and maternity or paternity leave. Excluded are situations in which work was missed due to vacation or personal days, holiday, labour dispute, and other reasons. For multiple jobholders, absence data refer only to work missed at their main jobs. The absence rate is the ratio of workers with absences to total full-time wage and salary employment.

Lost Worktime is defined as hours absent as a percentage of hours usually worked.

Overview of the BLS absence rates analysis

This part provides a detailed examination of the changes in absence rates that occurred from 2020 onwards. In particular, we analyse the deviation in absence rates from the 2002-2019 pre-pandemic trend, both in absolute and relative terms. We perform the analysis only for the subset of full time workers aged 25-54 as they are more representative of healthy prime workers. We perform the analysis for Men, Women and the Total number of workers (Total = Men + Women).

We first analyse the longer term trends in absence rates from 2002 to 2019 (the pre-pandemic period) so that we can establish a baseline for what can be considered "normal" or "expected" in variations and the historical trend in absence rates. We then detrend the changes in absence rates and analyse the remaining residuals, which are deviations from trend. For 2020 onwards, we use the forward projection of the 2002-2019 trend in absence rates.

The second part of the analysis consists in measuring the changes in absence rates relative to the baseline 2019 absence rate (pre-pandemic). We measure the changes in absence rates in 2020, 2021, and 2022 relative to the 2019 baseline. This provides a less sophisticated but easier to understand measurement of the changes in absence rates since 2020.

Absence Rates, 25-54 year-olds, (Deviation from 2002-2019 trend)

In this section we analyse changes in absence rates (total) relative to its linear trend spanning from 2002 to 2019 (the pre-pandemic period). To normalise the changes in absence rates from 2020 onwards relative to the baseline trend, we use as a volatility metric, the standard deviation of the deviations from trend (residuals) for the period 2002 to 2019.

Absence Rates and 2002-2019 trend, 25-54 year-olds

Absence Rates, 25-54 year-olds, absolute deviation from trend

Absence Rates, 25-54 year-olds, % and normalised (Z-Score) deviation from trend

Total Absence Rates, 25-54 year-olds, % change from 2019 value

This section analyses the changes in the absence rates from its 2019 value. We compute the changes (in percentage) in absence rates for 2020, 2021 and 2022, relative to 2019. This method of computing changes in absence rates has an advantage of being simpler to unserstand and interpret than the deviation from the 2002-2019 trend that was discussed in the previous section. As absence rates has an almost monothonically declining trend from 2002 to 2019, taking 2019 as a reference level will likely underestimate the actual increases in absence rates that we observed in the previous section.

Total (Men + Women) Absence Rates in 2020,2021 and 2022, % change from 2019 values.

Conclusions

• Absence rates for Men and Woman increased in each successive year since 2019.
• The largest rise in absence rates was in 2022 at 28.6% higher than the 2019 rate, which occurred after the main impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
• In absolute terms, for 25-54 year-olds, absence rates due to illness or injury rose from about 1.8% in 2019 to 2.5% in 2022.
• Taken in conjunction with the increase in disability rates since early 2021, which we’ve shown here and here, we believe that the most likely cause for the rise in absence levels was the impact of the mass Covid-19 vaccinations.