The absenteeism rate in Spain in 2021 was 6.6%, the second highest since these types of records were available, only behind the 7.1% registered in 2020, the year in which the pandemic and Strict confinements contributed decisively to increasing a percentage that in previous years had been around 5.5%.
This rate means that in 2021 each Spanish professional did not work 106 hours of their annual working day, on average, and 1,701 million working hours were lost, which would be equivalent to 937,900 employees not working throughout the year. The economic impact of this absenteeism translates into losses amounting to 37,000 million euros, that is, around 3.1% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the XI Report on healthy companies and absenteeism management of the company human resources Adecco.
Autonomous communities. If we look at the data by region, we see that the number of work absenteeism is distributed quite unevenly throughout Spain. The autonomous community in which the fewest hours of work were lost was Andalusia (72 hours per worker per year), which is equivalent to a rate of 4.6%, followed by the Balearic Islands (77 hours) and Castilla-La Mancha (79 hours ). At the far end, the Autonomous Communities where the highest absenteeism was recorded in 2021 were the Basque Country (132 hours), Catalonia (117 hours) and Asturias (109).
As for the rest of the regions of Spain, the ones that registered the most hours of work absenteeism in descending order were: Canarias (104), Navarra (103), Aragón (101), Galicia (100), La Rioja (99), Murcia ( 97), Madrid (95), Castilla y León (93), Cantabria (89), Valencian Community (87) and Extremadura (82).
Regarding the evolution with respect to previous years, the Balearic Islands was the one that experienced the greatest improvement, with a reduction of 34 hours lost per year per worker, followed by Castilla y León (7.5 hours less) and the Canary Islands (6 hours less). . While at the opposite extreme are La Rioja, where the number of hours lost due to absenteeism has increased by 14 compared to the previous year, followed by the Valencian Community and Extremadura, both with increases of almost 9 hours.
work absenteeism. It should be remembered that absenteeism is considered to be any occasional and unplanned absence of a worker from their job, so vacations, holidays or those that have to do with an Employment Regulation File (ERTE) do not count as such. ).
They do compute, however, the absences caused by temporary incapacity, that is, by common illness or non-occupational accident, which are, quantitatively, those that cause the greatest absenteeism from work. Also included in this metric are hours not worked due to maternity or adoption, paid leave or labor conflict.
Therefore, it is wrong to equate absenteeism with unjustified absences, which are only part of the working hours that are lost, but not the main reason or one of the most important.
Image: Daniel Gonzalez/DPA Germany
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism