Sickness absence

Sickness absence

Absence from work due to one's own illness.

Doctor-certified sickness abcense

Absence from work due to one's own illness certied by a doctor.

Self-certified sickness absence

Absence from work due to one's own illness certified by oneself.

Proportion of employees with sickness absence

The number of employees with doctor-certified sickness absence on a specific reference date in per cent of total number of employees without taking into account of part-time jobs. From 2015 the reference date is Tuesday in the week covering 16th day in the last months of the quarter.

From 2nd quarter 2002 to 4th quarter 2014, the reference date was the Tuesday before the last Wednesday in the Quarter, unless that ended up being the Easter- or Christmas week. In these situations, the reference date was set a week earlier.

Employees with sickness absence adjusted for partial sick leave

The number of employees with doctor-certified sickness absence on a specific reference date adjusted for partial sick leave. This means that a partial sick leave of 80 per cent counts as 0.8 and not as one. From 2015 the reference date is Tuesday in the week covering 16th day in the last months of the quarter. We also compute the rate of this figure by dividing by total number of employees without taking into account of part-time jobs.

Sickness absence rate

The sickness absence rate measures man-days lost due to own sickness as a percentage of contractual man-days.

Sickness absence rate = {sickness absence man-days*100} / contractual man-days

Man-day

One man-day corresponds to the length in time of one working day for a person in a full-time position (100% position).

Sickness absence man-day

A sickness absence man-day corresponds to one sickness absence day for a person in a full-time position (100%) and who is on full sick leave (100% degree of disability).

Sickness absence man-days in the period

{sickness absence days in the period} x {position proportion} x {degree of disability}.

Sickness absence day

A day during which one normally is supposed to be at work but is not because of one's own illness. The number of sickness absence days in a case of sickness absence is equal to the number of calendar days within the statistics period to which the case of sickness absence pertains minus any weekends and holidays.

Position proportion

Position proportion is reported from the employers to the A Scheme Register. The proportion is allowed to take values between 0 and 1. Until 2014 position proportion was calculated as contractual working hours, divided by 37.5. Hence, we assumed 37.5 to be working hours of a full-time position, which was a simplification. From 2015 a full-time position will have position proportion = 1, regardless of the number of hours per week.

Degree of disability

Whether the person in question is on full or partial sick leave, and to what degree, is indicated by the degree of disability. The degree of disability is between 20 percent and 100 percent, where 100 means full sick leave. If a sickness absence case consists of more than one medical certificate, we use the average of the degrees of disability for the medical certificates in question.

Contractual man-days in a period

{contractual working days in the period} x {position proportion}

Working day

A day during which one normally is supposed to be at work.

Contractual working days

The number of working days that a person has agreed on with his or her employer to work in a period. We define possible working days as the number of calendar days that the employee relationship is lasting minus weekends and general holidays. For many employees such a generalisation will not be correct. At the aggregate level, and when looking at a given period, we believe nonetheless that this approach works reasonably well. For reasons of quality, in the statistics we established a ceiling for how many employee relationships a person may have simultaneously.

Contractual working hours

Contractual working hours for each employee is reported in hours per week with two decimals to the A Scheme register. This number is being used to calculate position proportion, if this proportion is missing. Earlier, all the job relations in the population were divided into six groups formed by sex and the interval values of scheduled working hours from the Employee Register (4-19 hours per week, 20-29 hours per week, and 30 hours per week and above). For each job relation in a group, the scheduled working hours was estimated as the average scheduled working hours in this group according to the Labour Force Survey (LFS).

Case of sickness absence

A case of sickness absence is defined by a common personal identification number, a common start date for the medical certificate date, and a common organisation number for the company. A case of sickness absence will consist of the initial medical certificate and also medical certificates being extensions of the initial one. If an employee on sick leave has more than one job relation, we assume that the person has sick leave from all job relations. For example, a person having two job relations being active during two medical certificates, and these medical certificates are separated by some time where the person is not on sick leave, the person will have four cases of sickness absence.

Counting employee relationship

In some instances, it is necessary to select one employee relationship as counting for persons who are registered with more than one employee relationships simultaneously at a given reference point or in a given period. For instance we have to do this if we wish to divide employees by industry and municipality of the workplace.

The counting employee relationship is selected according to the following criteria, which are the same criteria used by Statistics Norway in its Register statistics of employees:

The employee relationship having the longest contracted working hours per week is the counting employee relationship of a person. In the case of equal working hours, the one with the latest start date is chosen.

Age

Age is defined as the age per the 16th of each month.

Municipal of residence

The variable indicates the person's municipal of residence according to the National Registry. The municipal of residence applies only to doctor-certified sickness absence, not self-certified sickness absence.

It is also aggregated to the county level.

Municipal of workplace

Indicates the location of the company where the employee works.

It is aggregated to the county level.

Sector

Sector is obtained from the Central Register of Business Establishments and Enterprises (CRE) and apply to the enterprise where the person works. The following division is used:

1. Central government: comprises central governmental units that carry out political responsibilities, provide and enforce regulations, produce public services (mainly non-market) and redistribute income and wealth.
2. Local government: comprises local and regional institutional units (mainly counties and municipalities) that carry out political responsibilities and produce public services (mainly non-market).
3. Private sector, public enterprises, and unspecified: comprises private enterprises and public incorporated enterprises not included in the central or local government. Public incorporated enterprises are enterprises where the state - directly or indirectly - holds a stake of more than 50 percent of the paid-in-capital.

Duration

Duration is measured among ongoing sickness absences at the reference point, which causes the duration to be shorter than if we were looking at terminated sickness absences.

Education

The reference date for educational information is October 1st each year, and the figures are published in June the following year. When publishing figures for the 2nd quarter, new educational information is incorporated into the data basis (education as of October 1st the previous year). This means that figures on sickness absence distributed by education level for the 4th and 1st quarters will be based on previously observed information than the latest available.

Example: When publishing the 2nd quarter, educational information for the previous year is included. This means that for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quarters of 2023 and the 1st quarter of 2024, the educational information is based on October 1st, 2022. When publishing the 2nd quarter of 2024, new educational information from October 1st, 2023, will be used.

During revisions, we retrieve the latest information on educational levels without having regular routines for this. Updated information on educational levels does not lead to significant changes in the sickness absence figures, and we have therefore chosen not to have revision routines.

On June 14th, 2024, we revised statistics table 13333 back to the 1st quarter of 2015 due to a major restructuring of production. In October 2023, an error was discovered in the data for educational levels for the 4th quarter of 2022 and the 1st quarter of 2023. During this revision, there were therefore larger corrections in these quarters and minor changes for the remaining quarters.

Industry is coded according to the Standard Industrial Classification, SIC2007.

Occupation is coded according to the Norwegian Standard Classification of Occupations (NOS C 521).

Sector is coded according to the classification of institutional sector codes from the Central Coordinating Register for Legal Entities.

Education is coded according to the Norwegian Standard Classification of Education, NUS (NOS C 751).

Region is coded according to the Classifications of region.