GEN Z IS TRANSFORMING THE CONCEPT OF SICK DAYS

Gen Zers are calling in sick to work. They’re racking up sick days and taking more mental-health days. In the spring of their careers, they’re even going on sabbatical. Gen Zers are setting a boundary, and that boundary is not being at work when they’re not feeling up to it.

The amount of time people take off from their jobs has risen steadily over the past few years. Dayforce, a human-resources platform, said sick leave was up by 55% in 2023 compared with 2019 among companies that use its services in the US. Gusto, another HR platform, has similar findings: Using data from over 300,000 small and midsize businesses that use its platform, it found that 30% of workers in professional-services industries — meaning white-collar workers — took sick leave last year, a 42% jump from 2019. This year, it says, that figure has continued to climb.

While workers of all ages are taking more time away, it’s young people who are really driving the shift. Gusto found that the 25-to-34 crowd was taking more sick time than older workers. Similarly, Dayforce found that people 35 and under had a 29% increase in sick leave since 2019, compared with a 16% increase for people over 35. Younger remote workers are taking more sick time than older ones, too. The same is true for extended leave: Gusto found at the start of the year that workers 22 to 26 were the most likely group to have taken a sabbatical, followed by 27- to 34-year-olds.

“There’s just a generational shift towards balancing work life, taking care of your whole self and those sorts of things. I think that we’ve heard over and over again that Gen Z and younger millennials really prioritize those things,” said Liz Wilke, a principal economist at Gusto. “People are just, I think, being a little more protective of their health and enforcing some work-life boundaries, especially around their health.”

There is no single answer for why workers are taking more time off post-pandemic or why Gen Zers in particular feel more inclined to take time away from work than their older counterparts.

By Emily Stewart