Sickness costing people up to £2,200 in lost earnings, research suggests

A new study by the IPPR think tank found that someone with a new physical illness experienced a fall of around £1,800 in their annual earnings before the pandemic.

For a mental illness someone would see their earnings fall by around £2,200.

Its research, looking at the last 7 seven years of data, also found that others living in the same household as a newly unwell person would see their annual earnings fall by £1,200.

The IPPR’s Commission on Health and Prosperity said that the UK should aim to be the healthiest country in the world within 30 years, while sickness currently is a key factor in around half of people leaving work.

In what it called the most ambitious study on the cost of poor health on employment and earnings, the think tank said that chronic physical conditions are estimated to have driven 700,000 people to leave employment, forgoing all their earned income.

Professor Dame Sally Davies, co-chair of the IPPR Commission on Health and Prosperity, and a former chief medical officer for England, said: “We now know that the UK does worse on health than most other comparable countries – and that this has a tremendous human and economic cost.

“We also know exactly what policies and innovations could transform health. So it is mystifying why UK politicians, across all parties, have failed to take decisive action.

“We need a radical increase in our national ambition – equivalent to the Victorian efforts to transform sanitation and clear slums. Why shouldn’t Britain be the healthiest country in the world?”

Lord Ara Darzi, leading surgeon, former health minister, and co-chair of IPPR’s Commission on Health and Prosperity, said: ”The UK is suffering from more sickness while real incomes are falling. This work sets out the compelling evidence that these are not unrelated trends.

"Policymakers risk being pennywise but pound foolish by focusing too much on the costs of tackling chronic health problems and too little on the economic, social and individual benefits of greater investment in the nation’s health.”

It comes as the total number of days lost by UK workers to sickness increased to a record high last year, according to new data.

The Office for National Statistics said about 185.6 million working days were lost due to sickness or injury during the year, almost 25 per cent more than 2021 and the highest since records began in 1995.

Meanwhile, the overall rate of absence due to sickness hit an 18-year high.

It said 2.6 per cent of all working hours were loss due to sickness or injury during the year, increasing from 2.2 per cent in 2021.

Increases in the size of the UK workforce partly contributed to the record number of days lost in total.

The ONS said women and older workers were among those to report the highest rates of sickness absence.

ONS head of labour market and household statistics David Freeman said: “Because the working population is much bigger now than it was nearly 20 years ago, in 2022 the total number of working days lost was the highest on record.”