Annual sickness absence rates of workers in the UK labour market, including number of work days lost, by country and region, sex and age group, and employment type. These are official statistics in development.

The average number of sick days taken per worker in the United Kingdom was 4.4 days in 2024, compared with 4.9 days in 2023, and 5.7 days in 2022. Average sick days taken in 2022 were the highest they have been since 2005, but still lower than the average of 7.2 days taken in 1995.

In the third quarter of 2025, an estimated 2.8 million people were economically inactive due to being on long-term sickness leave in the UK, slightly down from a peak of over 2.84 million people in the fourth quarter of 2023. This figure has been rising considerably since 2019, when there were just over two million people economically inactive for this reason. Since the third quarter of 2021, long-term and temporary sickness has been the main reason that people were economically inactive, accounting for 32.1 percent of economic inactivity in the fourth quarter of 2024. What is driving the increase in long-term sickness? It is unclear if there are any specific reasons for the continued growth of long-term sickness in the UK. As of 2022, some of the most common health conditions cited as the reason for long-term sickness were to do with mental health issues, with 313,00 suffering from mental illness, and a further 282,000 for depression-related illness. It is also likely that the COVID-19 pandemic caused an impact, with around 1.8 million people in April 2022 reporting an experience of Long Covid. In general, while the majority of people on long-term sick leave are over the age of 50, there has been a noticeable increase in those aged under 35 being off on long-term sickness. Between 2019 and 2022, the number of those aged between 16 and 34 on long-term sickness increased by 140,000, compared with just 32,000 for those aged between 35 and 49. UK labor market set to continue cooling in 2025? In 2022, the UK labor market was slightly more weighted in favor of workers and people looking for work than usual. Unemployment fell to historical levels, while job vacancies reached a peak of more than 1.3 million in May. Wage growth also remained strong during this period, although as this occurred at a time of high inflation, wages fell in real terms for a long period between November 2021 and June 2023. Although the job market continued to show signs of resilience, for some time, there are signs this is now changing. In December 2024, the UK unemployment rate was 4.4 percent, a joint post-pandemic high, while in the same month job vacancies fell to their lowest level since May 2021.

According to a Statista survey from the middle of 2025, among the roughly 79 percent of adult respondents who worked or studied, one quarter did not take any sick leave in the last 12 months. However, this was a decrease from previous years. In the first quarter of 2021, for example, around 34 percent of U.S. adults reported not taking any sick leave days in the past year. Of those that did miss work or school due to ill health in 2025, 2-3 days of sick leave was most common. Health-related absenteeism among U.S. workers From October 2023 to September 2024, the month with the highest share of full-time workers in the United States who were absent from work for health-related reasons was January, with around 2.8 percent of workers absent from work because of illness. However, the month with the largest share of workers absent for health reasons varies year to year. Women in the United States tend to report being absent from work due to ill health more often than men, with this being true for every month from October 2023 to September 2024. Seniors are also more likely to be absent from work for health-related reasons than younger adults. What share of U.S. workers get paid sick leave? In 2021, around 80 percent of civilian and private industry workers in the United States had access to paid sick leave benefits. In comparison, around 91 percent of local government workers had paid sick leave benefits, while 96 percent of state government workers had such benefits. Among the civilian workers with paid sick leave, around 66 percent had a fixed number of days per year that they either earned or accrued. Only three percent of civilian workers have access to paid sick leave as needed. Access to paid sick leave in the United States does differ slightly depending on the occupation.

The youth unemployment rate for those aged between 16 and 24 in the United Kingdom was 15.3 percent in the third quarter of 2025, compared with 14.1 percent in the previous quarter. After falling to just 9.2 percent in July 2022, the youth unemployment rate has increased at pace and is almost as high as it was following the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Nevertheless, youth unemployment is lower than in the early 2010s, when youth unemployment reached a high of 22.5 percent in November 2011. Almost one million UK youth not in work or education In the fourth quarter of 2024, the number of people aged between 16 and 24 that were not in education, employment, or training (NEET) was 987,000, the highest figure in more than ten years. One of the main reasons for this increase has been the general rise in people being on long-term sick leave since the COVID-19 pandemic, which reached a peak of 2.8 million at the end of 2023. While older adults are still more likely to be on long-term sick, the number of younger workers on long-term sickness has increased more rapidly. In the ten years between 2014 and 2024, the number of 16 to 24-year-olds economically inactive for this reason increased from 138,000 to 271,000. Prospects for youth employment in 2025 Reversing the current trend of increasing youth inactivity is one of the main challenges facing the UK economy in 2025. It is currently unclear if the labor market is equipped to handle this issue, however. Job vacancies, while not at a particularly low level, have been falling for several months since peaking in 2022. UK businesses are also under pressure from an increase in the national insurance they must pay from April 2025 onwards, with taxation being the main external concern of UK businesses at the end of 2024. In this environment, it is uncertain if they will hire more staff, especially younger workers who have spent extended periods of time out of work.