It is a rather recurring antiphon. The French do not work enough. And too often they are on illness. The collective disease of illness law has increased by 25% since the end of Covir according to Amélie de Montchalin, the Minister of Public Accounts.
The disease now spends 17 billion euros compared to 10 billion in 2010 in 2010. The Diot-Siaci firm also raises an average duration of constantly increased stops. While recognizing that a significant part of the disease license goes hand in hand with the aging of the active population, the government is concerned about a high prevalence of illness license in young people.
Germany at the top of the ranking
But are sick judgments specifically French? How do we sit in France compared to our European partners? While the Minister of Public Accounts indicates that the figures dig the gap with Germany, it would seem, on the contrary, that the use of diseases is not a specifically French practice. According to the OECD data “absence of work due to the disease”, it is the Germans who are at the top of the classification with 24.9 days a year of stop in 2022, followed by Latvia and 20.4 days that the Czech Republic (19 days).
Countries like Spain, Slovenia, the Netherlands or Luxembourg have, according to the OECD, the average number of days of illness on France.
These figures differ from those given by the German Health Insurance Fund, the Techniker Krankenkasse that records by 2024 17.7 days of absence on average by the employee in the first eleven months of the year. France indicates 14.2 days according to OECD data. If we refer to the Figures Insee Since 2022, there is a gap between the public and private sector with 19.2 days in the public and 16.1 days in the private sector.
Country databases differ, as well as selected definitions and calculation methods. But be the figures considered, Germany remains the European illness license champion, with a constant progression every year.
Disease, fatigue and psychosocial risks
If the nature of the compensation plan can explain the importance of the use of illness license, as in France, where a parliamentary stop is compensated with 50% of the salary for up to six months (generally completed by mutuals) or in Germany where employees are compensated without a day of 100% of their income within the limit of 78 weeks, the generosity of health systems does not explain everything.
Most interested countries are a constant progression of Covir figures. Perhaps a different relationship with the disease and the risk of infectious propagation. But, as analysts and government members, the emergence of mental illnesses and the resurgence of psychosocial risks, would stop more and more.
According to Diot-Siaci study on French employees, fatigue is the second in the most cited stop reasons. In more general terms, repeated or prolonged judgments could also be a symptom of evolution of the employment relationship, considered less central in personal life.
Source: BFM TV
