The absenteeism rate in elderly care reached a record high of 9.4 percent last year. The high dropout rate of employees costs the sector 1.6 billion euros, Intrakoop has calculated.
The purchasing cooperative of the healthcare sector points out that absenteeism is nowhere as high as in healthcare. In combination with a structural staff shortage, this poses “a major challenge” for the sector, the researchers write in an annual report.
At the end of last year, there were more than ten thousand hard-to-fill vacancies in the nursing, care and home care sector (VVT). These are positions that had already been open for months. If these are not filled, the workload on the staff increases.
Absenteeism in the sector has been increasing for years. Between 2016 and 2019, the percentage of sick employees gradually increased from 6 percent to 7 percent.
When the corona pandemic reached the Netherlands in 2020, absenteeism increased faster. The previous peak was in 2022 and amounted to 9.2 percent. A year later, the absenteeism rate had fallen slightly to 9.1 percent, but this trend is not continuing.
In 2024, 19.6 billion euros of VVT expenditure was spent on personnel costs, an increase of 8.3 percent. In addition to salaries, personnel costs also include social security contributions and pension contributions. An important part of the increase is caused by collective labor agreement agreements on wages and doubling of the mileage allowance for personnel.