13 June 2025
In coming to the end of Men’s Health Week, the chart below highlights recently published Office for National Statistics Labour Force data on sickness absence rates in the UK labour market.
Sickness absence rates are defined as the percentage of working hours lost because of sickness or injury.
It shows that the overall male rate has fallen back down to the 2019 pre-pandemic period. Historically, the 30-year figures show that men are taking less time off than they did in 1995. This is positive news. However, whilst the rate for those off work because of mental health conditions was lower in 2024 than in 2019 (which is good), it is still higher than in 2009 (the earliest data the ONS published figures for).
Other figures show:
(1) Total number of days lost by men to sickness in 2024 was 68.3 million (80.5 million women). Again, back to pre-pandemic levels as in 2019, the figure for men was 67.2 million (71.8 million women). In 1995, the numbers of days lost were 101.7 million and 83.3 million respectively – so there has been a large fall in the last 30 years.
(2) Average number of days lost for men in 2024 was 4.0 (4.9 for women). In 2019, these figures were 3.9 and 4.5 respectively – and in 1995, they were 7.2 and 7.1 respectively.
(3) The four main reasons for male illness were: Minor illnesses (32.7%); Musculoskeletal problems (18.2%); Other – such as accidents, infectious diseases and diabetes (14.9%); and mental health conditions (7.7%). The latter is lower than in 2019 when the male percentage was 9.5%. The mental health percentages for women have fallen too – 11.5% (2024) and 12.0% (2019).
However, the percentage of men who were absent from work in 2009 due to mental health conditions was 5.7% (7.8% women), so this is still lower than today. The ONS data does not have more detail on rates and numbers by conditions.
