WASHINGTON (Royters) — So-called mental health days cost American companies a staggering $61 billion a year, according to a recent report by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Employees (NCMEE).
The report, “American Workers Under Attack,” represents the first in-depth analysis of a previously unreported cost to American businesses. It summarizes findings from more than a million survey responses elicited over the past three years from U.S. employees working in all sectors of the economy except for farms and the public sector.
Radoslaw Rakocevic, NCMEE executive director and the principal author of the report, said, “Our report refutes the long-held conventional wisdom that physical ailments are the #1 cause of employee absenteeism. Taking time off for the sake of one’s mental health easily eclipses reasons such as back pain, migraine headaches, and sick kids.”
The survey protocol, according to Rakocevic, “drilled down to identify the subsets under ‘mental health day.’” He said the overwhelming [73%] leader within the set was stated by respondents as “days to recover from mistreatment by incompetent managers and supervisors.”
So how did NCMEE arrive at a figure of $61 billion? Rakocevic said the Center, with support from the Harvard Business School, used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ “Employment Situation Summary: Q3 2008” (dated October 8, 2008).
According to the BLS summary, (1) there are 146 million U.S. workers in the civilian labor force (non-farm), (2) the average rate of pay (private sector) is $17.64/hour, and (3) the average number of hours worked per week is 37.35.
Using these figures and the reported average of three mental health days per year per employee, the annual cost to American companies is $61,810,560,000, according to the NCMEE report.
Rakocevic added, “As disturbing as our findings are, we shudder to think about how current and anticipated economic conditions—and specifically the jobs picture—will drive the cost of worker abuse to new highs.”
