Worker Health and Safety Surveillance

Absences in the Workplace

Key points

  • We use data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) to monitor health-related workplace absences reported by full-time workers.
  • Increased absences could mean workers in certain industries, occupations, or demographic groups are experiencing more illness than usual.
  • Public health professionals can pair absenteeism's rich demographic information with more traditional flu-like illness surveillance data to better measure the impact of flu-like illnesses.
image of missing construction worker hat, indicating a missing worker.

About workplace absenteeism

Workplace absenteeism refers to time taken off work due to illness or other reasons, such as childcare or transportation issues.

Health-related workplace absences

NIOSH monitors absences reported by full-time workers due specifically to their own illness, injury, or other medical issue. This is known as health-related workplace absenteeism.

Understanding patterns of workplace absences can be useful for public health. Increased absences could mean that workers in certain industries, occupations, or demographic groups are experiencing more illness than usual. This information can be used to help guide workplace interventions.

View the latest data trends

The following dashboards show the most recent prevalence of worker absences due to health-related reasonsA.

The data for these visualizations are available in an Excel Workbook.

See the footnotes used in this dashboard.B

How these data fill a gap

CDC's traditional flu surveillance is mainly based on disease reporting from doctors and laboratory testing. During flu season, not all people who are sick go to a doctor; however, they often take off work.

African American man laying on a white couch, taking his temperature.
When we feel sick, we may not see a doctor, but we may take off work. Increased absences could mean that workers in certain industries, occupations, or demographic groups are experiencing more illness than usual.
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Studies have found that health-related workplace absences and flu-like illnesses follow the same trends.123This is why absenteeism data can be a good supplementary resource for monitoring outbreaks.

Though more traditional data are obtained quickly, they may not include much demographic information to guide interventions. Absenteeism data are more detailed with useful demographics, like age, race, and sex. However, these data take more time to collect.

If we combine absenteeism data with other traditional flu-like illness surveillance data, we can better measure the overall impact of flu outbreaks and epidemics/pandemics caused by other diseases.

Below, we demonstrate the value of combining health-related workplace absences data with traditional data sets.

See the footnotes used in this dashboard.C

Who benefits from these data

Monitoring trends in health-related workplace absenteeism across the U.S. can help:

  • Doctors, other healthcare personnel, employers and workers be more informed about disease occurrence and severity during a flu pandemic and during seasonal epidemics.
  • Public health authorities better target prevention messages and evaluate how well pandemic control measures work.
  • Emergency responders prepare for future pandemics.

How we calculate absenteeism

NIOSH uses data on workplace absences from the Current Population Survey (CPS).

Each month, NIOSH updates charts showing the amountA of health-related absenteeism among full-time workers, using CPS data collected in the previous month. For a particular week each month, a sample of full-time workers are asked how many hours they actually worked. If they worked less than 35 hours, they are asked about the reason for their absence. These 1-week measures are meant to represent absenteeism for all weeks in the month.

Our analysis compares the current amount of health-related absences from work to an "epidemic threshold." The epidemic threshold is calculated using baseline absenteeism data from the previous five years, averaged by month, and information about the likely variation of these baseline data.

Absenteeism is considered significantly higher than expected when the lower limit of the estimate's margin of error is higher than the epidemic threshold.

Related publications

Groenewold MR, Burrer SL, Ahmed F, Uzicanin A, Free H, Luckhaupt SE. Increases in Health-Related Workplace Absenteeism Among Workers in Essential Critical Infrastructure Occupations During the COVID-19 Pandemic — United States, March–April 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69:853–858.

Groenewold MR, Burrer SL, Ahmed F, Uzicanin A, Luckhaupt SE. Health-Related Workplace Absenteeism Among Full-Time Workers — United States, 2017–18 Influenza Season. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2019;68:577–582.

Groenewold MR, Konicki DL, Luckhaupt SE, Gomaa A, Koonin LM. Exploring national surveillance for health-related workplace absenteeism: Lessons learned from the 2009 influenza A pandemic. Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2013;7:160-166.

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Content Source:
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
  1. The amount of health-related workplace absenteeism is calculated as the percentage of full-time workers who worked less than 35 hours because they were ill, injured, or had another medical issue.
  2. [*] Defined as working fewer than 35 hrs during the reference week due to illness, injury or other medical issue....[†] Defined as employed persons aged 16 years or older who usually work 35+ hours per week at all jobs combined...[‡] Expected values based on monthly averages for the previous 5 seasons....[§] Defined as working fewer than 35 hrs during the reference week for non-economic reasons....[¶] Occupation classification based on subjects' primary job.
  3. [*]Data source: CPS Home: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov)[†]Data source: U.S. Influenza Surveillance: Purpose and Methods | CDC[‡]Data source: Trends in Number of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths in the US Reported to CDC, by State/Territory; CDC COVID Data Tracker: Links to Archived Data and Visualizations
  1. Groenewold MR, Konicki DL, Luckhaupt SE, Gomaa A, Koonin LM. Exploring national surveillance for health-related workplace absenteeism: Lessons learned from the 2009 influenza A pandemic. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness. 2013;7:160-166.
  2. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Sickness absenteeism among full-time workers in the US, August 2009. NIOSH eNews. 2009;7:6. Accessed December 30, 2011.
  3. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Issues in Labor Statistics. Washington, DC: Bureau of Labor Statistics; 2010. Illness-related work absences during flu season. Accessed December 30, 2011.Occupational groups correspond to the CPS Major Occupational Group recodes, which are groupings of Census Occupation Codes.