ArticleBMJ open2025
Associations between prior and subsequent sickness absence before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a Swedish prospective cohort study of 306 933 blue-collar workers in the retail and wholesale industry.
Article in BMJ open, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- A Tool for Predicting Disability Pension Applications in the Finnish Public Sector: Sickness Absences as Early Indicators of Declining Work Ability.Risk management and healthcare policy · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesThe length and frequency of previous sickness absence (SA) spells have been shown to be associated with future SA. The aim was to examine if this pattern persisted during the COVID-19 pandemic among workers in retail and sales.
designWe used pseudonymised, individual-level data from three nationwide Swedish administrative registers to conduct a prospective cohort study.
settingSweden.
participantsAll 306 933 blue-collar workers in retail and wholesale, aged 18-67 in Sweden in 2019. OUTCOMES: Likelihood and length of SA.
methodsWe used a Negative Binomial Hurdle model to estimate incidence rate ratios (IRR) and odds ratios (ORs) to determine if SA patterns differed in 2020-2021 compared with 2018-2019. We examined how these patterns varied according to the length and frequency of SA in the preceding year. Only SA spells >14 days were included.
results54 993 (18.5%) workers had SA during 2020-2021, an increase from 46 024 (15.6%) in 2018-2019. We observed a dose-response association between the number of prior SA days and the likelihood and length of future SA days, both before and during the pandemic. The likelihood of subsequent SA was higher in 2020-2021 compared with 2018-2019 among individuals with up to 180 prior SA days. Individuals with no prior SA had a lower average number of subsequent SA days during the pandemic (IRR (95% CI) 0.96 (0.94-0.98)) than in 2018-2019, while those with 1-30, 31-90 or 181-365 prior SA days had a higher average number of SA days during 2020-2021.
conclusionIndividuals with many SA days prior to the pandemic were at particularly high risk of lengthy SA during the pandemic years.
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