Absences from work - 2001

July 4 2002 - Statistics Canada reports a significant increase in work absence rates in 2001, based on data from the Labour Force Survey.

700,000 full-time employees (around 7.0%) were estimated to have been absent from work for all or part of any given week due to personal reasons, including:

- illness or disability
- personal or family responsibilities, excluding maternity leave

This rate of absence compares with 6.3% in 2000 and 5.5% in 1997. Overall, a total of 3.4% of usual weekly work time was lost due to absences in the year 2001 - compared with 3.2% in 2000, and 3.0% in 1997.

For each full-time employee this represents an average of 8.5 days absence. This is about half a day greater than the average absence in 2000 and just over a day more than the 7.4 days five years earlier. Illness or disability accounted for an average 7 days per employee (compared to 6.2 days in 1997) with 1.5 days being attributed to personal and family responsibilities (up from 1.2 days in 1997).

It is estimated that 85.2 million Canadian workdays were lost due to personal reasons in 2001 - a substantial increase over the 78.6 million total for the year 2000 and 65.6 million for 1997.

Detailed tables are provided in Work absence rates, 1991 to 2001 (71-535-MPB, $50), more information from Statistics Canada at www.statcan.ca