H1N1 takes its toll on Canadians’ workplace productivity
Meagan Fitzpatrick
Canwest News Service
Friday, January 15, 2010
OTTAWA – More than one million Canadians missed work in the month of November alone because of the flu, Statistics Canada reported Friday.
And the productivity that was lost in that month alone was comparable to when Ontario and parts of the United States were hit with a massive power outage in the summer of 2003, the agency said.
Throughout the course of the H1N1 pandemic, public health officials have repeatedly asked Canadians to stay home if they are feeling sick, to help prevent the spread of the disease. As the numbers indicate, they appeared to listen.
On average, 1.5 million people lost 19.6 hours of work each because either they were sick or an immediate family member was ill with the H1N1 or the seasonal flu. The total number of hours lost for working Canadians aged 15 to 69 was just under 30 million.
The intensity of the H1N1 pandemic was high during most of the month of November and in fact, since the pandemic began last spring, about half of Canada’s death toll to date occurred in that month. As of Jan. 14, 418 deaths have been linked to the pandemic virus. More than 200 people died in November and hundreds were hospitalized.
Among the provinces, flu-related absenteeism was highest in Newfoundland and Labrador, where 14.2 per cent of workers lost hours and the lowest rate (7.6 per cent) was in Quebec.
Workers aged 30 to 44 had the highest rate of absenteeism of all of the age groups, and women missed work more often than men.
Nearly twice as many employees with children than those without lost work hours in November.
At the same time as people were away from their jobs, thousands of people were putting in overtime because of the flu. About 600,000 people put in 8.6 million extra hours at work in November, the Statistics Canada report said.
Health-care workers were the most likely to report logging extra hours. They accounted for two million hours of the total.
The Public Health Agency of Canada asked Statistics Canada to assess the impact of the flu on the labour force over a three-month period and this is its first report.
