The line graph illustrates how many employees from five distinct European nations were off from work due to ailment for a day or above between 1991 and 2001.
Overall, the number of illness absence workers in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK witnessed an upward trend with those in Sweden rocketing. In addition, the Netherlands’ workplace recorded the highest proportion of absent workers while the opposite was true for Germany’s.
Commencing with the three countries receiving the most absent letters, just nearly 5% of Dutch were absent from work in the first year, followed by a sharp climb to the highest number of around 5.5% in 1992 before a remarkable fall to around 4.2%. Those in France also mirrored this trajectory, topping the chart at exactly 5% in 1991, this increased negligibly the next year prior to a plummet to just above 3% in 1996. By contrast, only around 3% of Swedish affected by illness were unavailable for work for a day or more in the first 5 years. However, this number rocketed, overtaking the second position of French from 1996 onwards, and ending the period at 4.5% in the last year.
Moving to the remaining countries, the number of ill employees missing from work in the UK hovered at around 2.1% before a slight increase to 2.3% in the last year. By stark contrast, this number for Germans remained under 2% throughout the period and dropped to the lowest point of around 1.7% in 2001.