Sickness Peaked Two Years Post 'Pandemic' - OECD
Report offers insight into health trends via labour force
Sickness levels during the ‘COVID-19 pandemic’ did not peak until 2022, according to a new OECD report. The study, which looked at the impact of Covid 19 on labour markets worldwide, fails to question what cause the spike in post pandemic illness.
Titled What worked well in social protection during the COVID-19 pandemic? , the study includes an collection of illustrative graphs mapping sickness rates across OECD countries. All display a similar trend - a lack of sickness absence at the onset of the pandemic, followed by a peak in sickness absence rates two years later.
The working paper, which appears in this week’s OECD publications dispatch, found that sickness absence rates from work peaked in 2022 before falling again to ‘pre-pandemic levels’ by the end of 2023.
The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) has a membership of 38 countries including the US, UK, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, Australia, and Ireland.
A key finding of the paper relates how sickness absence rates did not actually occur with the onset of a ‘pandemic’ - as declared by the WHO in March 2020.
“Sickness absence peaked about two years after the onset of the pandemic and declined in most countries to close to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2023.
“Before the increase, most countries experienced a drop in sickness absence levels, likely due to the increased use of teleworking and the rapid expansion of JRS.”
The study examined how job retention schemes, unemployment benefits, sickness and disability-related benefits (and their prompt expansion) prevented large scale job losses. The authors disseminated disability benefit receipt data across multiple countries in the course of their work.
‘Unprecedented Shock’
Curiously, they attribute the ‘labour market response’ (ie benefits) as an explanation for the lack of impact arising from the ‘Covid 19 Pandemic.’
“The paper demonstrates and confirms the overall significant success in the labour market response to the COVID-19 pandemic across OECD countries. This contributes to explaining why the COVID-19 pandemic has disappeared from the labour market discussion much faster than initially expected, despite an unprecedented shock to labour markets and a sharp decline in working hours at the outset of the crisis,” the report states.
The report continues:
“Preventing sustained long-term unemployment and long-term sickness absence has secured jobs and incomes and prevented inactivity.”
The authors offer no explanation for the delayed sickness rate, which is laid out in the following graphs:
In their report, the authors explain the illness peak in economic terms, citing disability claims, job retention schemes and long-term unemployment rates.
“The delayed peak in sickness absence, in 2022 in most cases, raises a number of issues,” the authors state. The report notes that some countries, eg Spain, saw a sustained rate of increase in sickness absence. The authors do not question what might have caused this sustained rate of sickness in OECD populations.
Disability Benefits
“First, this peak is related directly to the introduction, widespread use, and gradual phase-out of Job Retention Schemes.
“Second, the late peak may be related to a certain degree to the earlier peak in long-term unemployment, especially in countries in which unemployed people are able to claim sickness benefits, thereby delaying and extending their unemployment benefit entitlements.
“Third, while some of the observed excess sickness absence in 2022 might have translated into disability claims by the end of 2023 (i.e., the end of the time series used in this chapter) already, additional spillover from sick leave to disability benefits is likely to come because the disability claims process is often long and decisions on disability claims can take several years. This is true especially in countries like Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland where all rehabilitation potential must have been exhausted before a disability benefit can be granted. It is also true in countries which saw a sustained increase in sickness absence, such as Spain.
The fifty page report notes that France experienced an initial drop in new disability benefit claims at the onset of the ‘pandemic’ in 2020. However, the following years reverse that trend with a marked increase in the number of new claims in 2021 and 2022. The report states that some workers in France ‘may have moved onto disability benefits as the crisis continued.’
“Figure 2.4 already showed that long-term unemployment in France did not increase over pre-pandemic levels after the onset of the pandemic and kept declining afterwards which could potentially be explained by workers in France being more likely to move onto disability benefits.”
The data prompted the authors to note that rates of sickness across all OECD countries were well below what would have been expected for what they describe as “first and foremost, a health crisis.”
The jump in sickness absence rates in 2022 is described as ‘somewhat surprising.’
Unsurprisingly, the report makes no link between the covid vaccination programs introduced across OECD countries and the sickness rates observed.
Sickness absence changed less than should have been expected
“Comparable to the trend in the number of long-term unemployed, a delayed increase in sickness absence rates is also observable in most OECD countries. Higher rates of sickness absence should have been expected as the COVID-19 pandemic was, first and foremost, a health crisis.
“Somewhat surprisingly, however, the increase in sickness absence did not happen in 2020, i.e., as an immediate response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but only (much) later.”
In conclusion, the authors offer perhaps the most illuminating paragraph of the study, noting that there is no longer any urgency in dealing with ‘COVID-19’ because ‘there are only a few new cases.’
“The urgency of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic has almost disappeared by 2025 as there are only few new cases, which also seem to have limited significance for health systems and the economy.
Read the full report:
What worked well in social protection during the COVID-19 pandemic?
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Interesting study. No mention of insurance payouts which is a major indicator of well-being in the work force. The U.S. data highlighted by Ed Dowd is a stark reminder of what happened to the healthiest segment of the population with the vaccine roll-out and related mandates and coercion.