Absenteeism in development doubles in ten years and firms estimate a value of three.5 billion yearly | Economy | EUROtoday

The widespread concern about rising absenteeism in most financial sectors is main enterprise organizations to judge the impression of this example on their exercise. This Monday, it was the National Construction Confederation (CNC), the primary employers’ affiliation within the sector, which warned that the hours paid and never labored final yr represented 6.2% of the overall agreed working hours (1,812 hours per yr). Specifically, every development employee stopped working a median of 113 hours per yr, double that of ten years earlier than.

According to different methods of calculating it, these absences represented a median lack of 14 work days (eight hours) or virtually three weeks of labor per worker per yr. Or, additionally, they’d have been equal to 70,000 development staff not working a single day in 2025.

The weight of this absenteeism – which basically contains absences attributable to sickness and work permits, not counting holidays – is double the three.2% recorded in 2018. This analysis provides that absences from work have price firms within the sector round 3.5 billion euros, virtually triple what it was seven years in the past. The quantity is equal to 1.7% of sector gross sales and weighs greater than company tax on firms’ outcomes.

The calculation of the associated fee for absenteeism in development final yr contains direct bills (contributions and salaries between the fourth and fifteenth day of sick go away, which is what the corporate pays for the reason that non permanent incapacity profit is then paid for by Social Security) and oblique bills (worth of the hours misplaced). The doc signifies that the direct price for firms final yr amounted to 633 million euros, whereas the oblique price was 2,932 million (2,441 million for non permanent incapacity and 491 million for different causes). And two thirds of the impression was borne by SMEs within the sector, the employers’ affiliation says.

Faced with such a value, the president of the primary development employers’ affiliation built-in into the CEOE, Pedro Fernández Alén, has introduced that firms within the sector will suggest to the unions a package deal of shock measures to fight absenteeism within the imminent negotiation of the sectoral collective settlement. Although the measures haven’t been specified, the enterprise supervisor has identified the existence of quite a few levers that might vary from bonuses that reward attendance and the absence of sick go away to decreasing the dietary supplements to the non permanent incapacity profit which might be included in quite a few collective agreements. “That these supplements are not paid from the first day, for example,” stated Alén.

The employers’ affiliation factors out that the primary explanation for the rising phenomenon is the rise in sick go away attributable to non permanent incapacity (sickness), which accounts for 72% of the expansion in absenteeism. Since 2018, hours misplaced for that reason have elevated by 75%. This implies that every employee misplaced 5 extra days of labor in 2025 attributable to being on sick go away than seven years earlier than.

The development business identifies 5 primary the reason why absenteeism is growing. They are the constructive relationship with the financial cycle (usually, the extra exercise there may be, the extra absences from work are recorded); the longer length of surgical ready lists; the extension of the ready interval for appointments with specialists; the progressive growing older of the employed group; and the extension of authorized permits and the creation of latest ones.

However, and in contrast to what was detected by Airef, which final week warned of the rising and primary weight of the absences of the youngest in comparison with these of the aged within the improve in absenteeism, the development employers guarantee that the best variety of absences from work of their firms is produced by the growing older of their workforce (the typical age in these actions is 46 years). Furthermore, Fernández Alén has warned a couple of explicit impression of absenteeism within the sector. “Although there are fewer than in the field or in services, in construction, absences from work have a greater drag effect than in other activities, because the absence of a specific worker on a construction site paralyzes it, given the possibility of being quickly replaced,” he assured.