Sickness absence in the UK labour market - 2023 and 2024

4th June 2025

abour Force Survey (LFS) estimates have been affected by increased volatility resulting from smaller achieved sample sizes, meaning that estimates of change should be treated with additional caution.

The LFS continues to be the sole source of data for unemployment, economic inactivity, self-employment and sickness absence in the UK labour market, and provides a range of breakdowns that are only possible from LFS data.

LFS estimates are weighted to 2022 mid-year population estimates for periods from January to March 2019; the sickness absence data therefore have a discontinuity at this point.

The sickness absence rate - the percentage of working hours lost because of sickness or injury - fell by 0.3 percentage points over the year to 2.0% in 2024.

An estimated 148.9 million working days were lost because of sickness or injury in 2024; this is on average 4.4 days lost per worker. 

Groups with the highest rates of sickness absence in 2024 included women, older workers, those with long-term health conditions, people working part-time, people working in the public sector and people working in elementary occupations.

Read the full report HERE