Germany is in a structural crisis—with falling exports, soaring energy prices, and weakening competitiveness in its most important sectors. But according to the bosses of Germany’s biggest businesses, the real problem is its workers taking too much sick leave.
Several German employers have lamented a record-breaking year for absences linked to illness.
Millions of Germans are calling in sick to work at a rate nearly four times seen in the U.K., giving a whole new meaning to the country’s unfortunate “Sick Man of Europe” moniker.
Research from Techniker Krankenkasse (TK), Germany’s largest health insurance fund, showed that workers missed an average of 19.4 days of work due to illness in 2023, a record high.
The country could be set for another record year of absences in 2024 after TK’s 5.7 million insured workers registered 14.3 sick days in the first nine months of 2024, before the notorious festive illness period.
While it has largely avoided a technical recession, Germany’s economy contracted by 0.3% in 2023 and fell by 0.2% in 2024.
‘Sick Man of Europe’
Employees took 15 days of sick leave in 2022 in Germany. By comparison, U.K. workers lost 5.7 days to illness in the same year.
The German Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (VFA) says that without the above-average number of sick days, Germany’s economy would have expanded by 0.5% in 2023 rather than declining by 0.3%.
In short, this means Germany’s high rate of sickness cost its economy about €26 billion last year, according to VFA.
These findings haven’t been lost on Germany’s employers, who don’t sound convinced that their employees are genuinely ill.
One unnamed blue-chip manufacturing executive told the FT that there was “a complete unwillingness” among workers to understand the sacrifices needed to help the country’s economy prosper. He singled out “work-shy” younger employees as a particular problem case.
“And then everyone wonders why Germany is the sick man of Europe,” the exec said.
German laws allow workers to take six weeks of sickness leave while receiving full pay, which has frustrated some employers.
In September, managers at Tesla’s Grünheide factory in Germany visited the homes of about 30 employees who had called in sick, Handelsblatt reported. The carmaker said worker absence jumped by 5% on Fridays and during late shifts compared with other days of the week.
“That is not an indicator of bad working conditions because the working conditions are the same on all working days and across all shifts,” the country’s manufacturing director, André Thierig, told the Guardian. “It suggests that the German social system is being exploited to some extent.”
Albrecht Wehner, an expert in health management at TK, said blaming the country’s economic problems on an increase in cold and flu cases is too shortsighted.
“A cold is sometimes unavoidable and usually only lasts a few days. Long-term diagnoses such as mental illnesses are far more significant. Relatively fewer employees are affected by this. But the number of days off is comparatively high,” Wehner said.
Germany is facing a myriad of social and economic issues that have no easy fix. The economic giant’s manufacturing-intensive economy has proved vulnerable to global shocks and is losing its competitive edge amid increased might from Chinese industry.
These have affected German exports, which account for an outsize share of the country’s GDP.
Its previous dependence on Russian oil and gas has also caused a shock to the country’s energy prices in the wake of sanctions imposed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, putting further pressure on input costs. “Everything that could go wrong went wrong, or is going wrong,” Carsten Brzeski, ING’s global head of macro, previously summarized to Fortune.
Editor’s note: A version of this article was first published on Fortune.com on Nov. 1, 2024.
