According to the DAK, almost a third of those in employment were sick at least once in the summer months. However, the insurance company describes the abolition of telephone sick leave as a “quick fix”.
According to an evaluation by the health insurance company DAK-Gesundheit, absences from work due to illness remained at a high level in the summer. Almost a third of those in employment (30.5 percent) were on sick leave at least once in the period from July to September inclusive, as the fund announced based on its own insured data. This is unusual for a summer quarter with high temperatures and many weeks of vacation.
“Serious and thorough debate needed”
Overall, the sickness rate was 5.0 percent, it said. On each day of the third quarter, an average of 50 out of 1,000 employees were on sick leave. According to DAK information, there were nine percent more sick notes this summer than a year ago. Just because the average duration of illness was shorter, DAK-insured employees would not have had more lost work overall than in the record summer of 2023.
Most failures were caused by musculoskeletal diseases – followed by mental illnesses and respiratory diseases. The sick notes of more than 2.3 million employees were included in the evaluation. According to the DAK, around 5.5 million people are insured. With a view to the economic downturn and the burden on companies, treasurer Andreas Storm called for a “serious and thorough debate about the real causes” for the persistently high sickness rate.
“Quick measures such as the demand to abolish telephone sick leave or a blue-collar debate do not help those affected or the companies,” he said. Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) spoke out in September in favor of having to go to the doctor again to get a sick note. There is “a correlation between the annual sickness rate in Germany and the introduction of the measure, which was intended as a good reduction in bureaucracy,” he said.
Mental illnesses are increasing
General practitioners and insurance companies such as AOK do not see any major abuse of telephone sick leave. The AOK Federal Association also recently reported a record level of sick notes. The number of cases of illness among employees in Germany reached its peak in 2023 in the first eight months of the current year. According to statistics, from January to August there were 225 sickness-related absences from work per 100 insured people.
Since the expected wave of illness in autumn and winter is still pending, the numbers are expected to be significantly higher than last year, according to the insurance company. Respiratory illnesses account for the largest proportion of absences among AOK insured people. According to the study, there have been around 75 such cases of incapacity for work for every 100 AOK members in the year to date. Here too, the health insurance company is expecting another record high for the current year.
However, insurers also include mental illnesses as drivers. The fact that these illnesses have increased could be due to the stress caused by global crises and increasing pressure in the world of work as well as the constant availability of employees. According to the AOK, employees in the education sector, in health and social services and in other contact-intensive areas such as public administration were particularly affected by mental illnesses.
