It's flu season, the time of year when employees call in sick. But if you are a Belgium government worker, flu season seems to last year round. In some Belgium government departments, employees take an average of 35 days of paid sick leave a year, according to a Wall Street Journal brief on Friday. Compare that to the average number of sick days an American worker takes: 4.5 days a year, according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The reason for Belgium's sickly state? "Half of all Belgians on medical leave say they suffer from depression -- the country has Western Europe's highest suicide rate," the WSJ reports.
Does that explain why the Belgium rate (albeit for the higher-end Belgium departments) dwarfs the rate for local, state and federal government employees?
Belgium's average is about three times more than what employees working in county and municipal governments in the United States take, according to a 2005 study. Local government workers average 10.2 sick days a year, the survey found. And that's almost 50 percent more than private sector employees, who average 7.4 days, an average, by the way, which is almost twice as high as what the OECD found.
The use of sick leave in the federal government seems to mirror local governments, if the Internal Revenue Service can be used as a barometer. According to a 2008 Treasury Department inspector general report, IRS employees took an average of 11 sick days a year.
The IRS -- and by extension, the federal government in general -- mirrors Europe, which the WSJ described as having a "sick-day culture."
The average European worker took off 11.3 days in 2005, . . . according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in Paris. The cost of those lost workdays to Europe's economy is sometimes as much as 1.3 percent of gross domestic product annually, says OECD senior economist Christopher Prinz.
Are U.S. government employees, who receive 13 days of sick leave a year, less depressed than their counterparts in Belgium, or is it just an example of "you take what you are given?"
COMMENTS
In America I guess even when you are sick sometimes you go to work because of the necessity to work. In countries like Belgium and Europe you call in sick in those cases. Ofcourse there are allways people taking advantage of the system, but the overall benefits of the system outweighs that in my opinion.
Subhero 04/12/09 10:21 pm ET
The weather in Belgium no doubt contributes to more depression there than elsewhere. Being just south of the English Channel, it's much cloudier and rainier than, say, Paris, just 100 miles to the south.
IT Software Developer 01/12/09 10:25 am ET
NEWFEDERALWORKER makes a good point about our ability to use sick leave for medical appointments. Many of those appointments are for checkups and therefore do not reflect the amount of leave used for actual sickness. That being said, as a relatively new fed worker myself, I find federal work to be much more stressful and fraught with frustration to the point that my mental health is not always what it should be and can often times impact my physical health. I took very few sick days when working in the private sector and quite a few more since becoming an FTE in the government.
NewFedWorker2 01/12/09 09:30 am ET
I don't know about Belgium, but in the US federal government, we use our sick leave for medical appointments. I'm a relatively new federal worker, but I am over 50 and I have had numerous medical appointments--mostly routine but some diagnostic and treatment oriented-- during the past year that added up to 10 days, but was out "sick" only one day.
NewFederalWorker 01/12/09 07:28 am ET
Interesting spin. In addition to the author's posit that "you take what you are given," there is yet another plausible explanation for the average IRS employee using 11 days of sick leave per year. It is entirely possible that when sick leave was conceived, the US government came up with a figure of 13 days of sick leave earned per year based on past actual experience and study. Why does the author think that it is the other way around? How about titling the article "Sick Leave, You Get What You Need"? Maybe the Belgians are more sick than Americans. The author mentioned nothing about the average Belgian's illness rate. It is possible that the average Belgian government worker is less sick than his private sector counterparts. This article is nothing more than an inflammatory attack on US government employees citing Belgian government employee data. And by the way, there are other illnesses than depression. This article was very illogical.
AJ 01/12/09 06:03 am ET