HEALTHDEUTSCHE WELLE
Sick leave: Germany not top in Europe
Germany's sick leave has reached a record average of nearly 20 days per year. Chancellor Merz is addressing the issue, with the country's absenteeism being compared to other European nations.
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Adjacent reporting
- Germans must now have doctor’s note to call in sick to work: ‘Extraordinarily high levels of sick leave’
- 'Exceptionally generous' sick pay fuelling NHS 'sick leave epidemic' with equivalent of 80,000 health service workers lost each year to illness absence - costing taxpayers £4.6billion
- ‘Technically, I’m not sick’: Can I take paid sick leave for my egg-retrieval fertility treatment?
- Sick day Britain: Workers took 149 million days off in 2025 - up nearly 10 million since Covid
- State paid leave laws build national pressure
- Sick note nation: Damning figures reveal 11MILLION sick notes were issued in England last year - with GPs refusing to say why more than 8million were unfit to work