Is the country morphing into ‘sick note Britain’? According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the average worker took 7.8 sick days in the past year: that’s up from 5.8 days from 2019 and the highest level reached since 2010. The number of days taken off is up in all sectors, but while the reasons for absences vary across professions, common themes are emerging. According to CIPD, this includes people testing for Covid-19, stress and the cost-of-living crisis.

While the data is new, this trend of increased absences has been growing for some time. The number of people on long-term sick leave skyrocketed around the pandemic, increasing by more than half a million, to now more than 2.6 million out of the workforce. Back in March, employment law firm GQ|Littler revealed that the number of ‘fit notes’ from GPs (detailing someone’s fitness to work) had risen and had hit a record high in 2021/22, totalling just under 10.5 million. It’s not surprising, then, that short-term absences are on the rise, too.

Covid-19 may be a new addition to the list for why people are out sick, but the other reasons cited by CIPD help to explain why absences now reflect where they were after the 2008 financial crash. It’s not just viruses that are keeping people from the office: it’s also the stresses brought about by economic worries. After the crash, it was recession and job insecurity weighing workers down. Today, it’s rising prices and a hit to purchasing power, as (until the past few months) average real wages lagged inflation.

Resources to help with this kind of stress remain extremely limited on the NHS: the service has never properly addressed its lack of mental health services, and with 7.6 million people on the NHS England waiting list now, it seems unlikely to be made a priority any time soon. It is yet another setback in the government’s ambitions for economic growth, as the Office for National Statistics estimates 185.6 million total working days last year were lost to short-term sickness and injury.