“As in previous years, the sick leave rate nationwide at 6 percent, but also in our region at 6.4 percent, is below the national average, which reached a record high of 6.6 percent in the first half of 2024,” says Katharina Ochs, coordinator for company health management, in the current health report of the AOK
With more than 20.9 million members (as of November 2021), AOK is the second strongest type of health insurance fund… Middle Upper Rhine: The statistics include data from 190,946 employees and are considered representative due to their market share of around 35 percent. “The sick leave is used to measure the proportion of days of incapacity for work that occurred during the evaluation period,” explains Katharina Ochs.
Regional differences in sickness absence
The district of Karlsruhe recorded a very high level of sickness in the first half of 2024 at 6.7 percent, followed by the district of Rastatt at 6.6 percent. The sickness rate in the city of Baden-Baden is 6.3 percent and in the city of Karlsruhe at 6 percent. This does not include those with statutory insurance who stay at home for up to three days without a certificate and do not attend the Health insurance companies
The 97 health insurance companies (as of January 26, 2022) in the statutory health insurance system are distributed across… “The sickness rate has remained at a very high level since the pandemic years,” says Ochs. “For comparison: In the previous ten years, we had an average sickness rate of 5.5 percent here in the region.”
More cases of illness, fewer sick days
The health report shows that AOK policyholders were absent from work on average 11.7 days in the first six months of 2024 – 3.4 percent longer than in the previous year. At 10.4 calendar days per case, the average duration of illness decreased by 1.9 percent. “We have been registering a trend for several years towards more frequent, but somewhat shorter, sick days,” says Ochs. “The figures do not reveal the reason for this development. However, in our collaboration with many regional companies, we observe a variety of triggers.”
In addition to the flu epidemic at the beginning of the year, Ochs cites the increased awareness of colds as one reason for both developments. “To avoid infecting colleagues and/or to rule out infection with corona, employees are more likely to take a few days off sick as a precaution.” It has also been observed that sick leave increases in times of low unemployment and vice versa. “Due to the labor shortage, employees may be less afraid of losing their jobs due to absences.”
Respiratory diseases still the top priority
The proportion of insured persons who reported sick once or more than once was 52.4 percent. In the comparable period in 2023, this figure was 51.2 percent. For every 100 insured persons in companies in the Middle Upper Rhine region, there were 112.9 reports of incapacity for work – the number of sick notes thus exceeded the previous year’s figure by 5.4 percent.
In addition to respiratory diseases with a share of 28.5 percent, musculoskeletal diseases came in second place with 14.1 percent in the first half of 2024, followed by digestive diseases with 6.2 percent and injuries with 5.3 percent. “The number of employees with respiratory diseases has more than doubled in the past three years,” explains Ochs.
