Russell Lynch: We go into work when ill, but productivity is getting no better

Since the financial crisis in 2008, absence rates overall fell by 0.5 percentage points to 1.9% last year, compared with 2.5% or higher in the much healthier (economically at least) pre-crash times in the early Noughties. Do we really think we’re healthier as a nation though? More likely it’s a reflection of the more precarious nature of the labour market since the crisis, as well as the crushing squeeze on real-terms wages over the past decade.

Here are a few more stats: in the final three months of last year, there were 901,000 workers who counted zero-hours contracts as their main source of income. How many of those are going to call in sick?

Another major characteristic of the workforce since 2008 is the big rise in self-employment. The number of workers in that category jumped by nearly a million people to 4.8 million, more than 15.1% of the labour force, in 2017. Surprise, surprise, when you don’t have the fallback of even statutory sick pay you’re much less likely to take a day off sick. That’s borne out in the figures too, as just 1.3% of hours are lost to illness among the self-employed compared with 2% among employees.

Another factor is that self-employed workers earn less; most commonly around £240 a week compared with £400 for employees. What’s the point of calling in sick when all you’re doing is hitting your earning capacity? And after a decade of stagnant real-terms earnings, who can actually afford to anyway?

To my mind, the relevance of the increasing self-employment trend is shown up by the much higher rates in bigger organisations. In the public sector you’re more likely to go off sick, although in fairness, the public sector tends to employ more older people and women, whom the number-crunchers say have higher absence rates. More generous sick pay terms probably help.

In big companies there are also much higher rates than those with fewer than 25 people, probably because there are more colleagues around able to pick up the slack.

The ironic thing about falling sickness rates overall is that they have little, if any, bearing on the UK’s productivity performance, which has flatlined for the past decade and shows little sign of recovery.

That much bigger issue depends on wider factors like education, training and investment. So the next time you see a colleague sneezing in the corner, just tell them to go home.