Abstract Background Employers are important stakeholders in efforts to facilitate the return-to-work (RTW) of employees after sick-leave, but the available data reveal large variation in employer support for RTW across European countries and firms. This paper explores in a comparative perspective what factors at the country level and at the firm level can explain these differences. Methods Employer support for RTW is examined using microdata covering 31 countries from the Third European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks (ESENER), conducted in 2019 (N = 9,775). These data are integrated with country-level indicators to capture national differences in economic incentives and institutional provisions concerning the management of sick-leave. Two-level mixed-effects logit models with random intercepts are used to estimate the impact that different firm characteristics and country-level factors have on the propensity to provide RTW support. Results The empty model has an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.345, indicating that a substantial share of the observed variation across European firms is determined at the country level. Larger establishments and those with workplace health risks are more likely to provide RTW support. Including firm-level indicators does however not reduce the observed between-country variance. Institutional differences in the economic costs of sick leave for employers, on the other hand, explain about 15% of this variance. The ICC drops more strongly after including in the model policy indicators that capture activating elements in the social security system and the existence of national policies targeting RTW. The full model explains almost two thirds (62.8%) of the observed between-country variance. Conclusions The findings highlight that only in few European countries employers are systematically involved in RTW support and strengthen the case for comprehensive policy strategies to engage employers in worker activation. Key messages • Employer characteristics, such as firm size, impact the propensity to provide RTW support, but they do not explain the large between-country variation that we observe across Europe. • Comprehensive national policy strategies and institutional incentives are crucial to engage employers systematically in RTW efforts.

We project the labor force in the United States to 2060 and contrast the outcomes with comparative projections for Germany. In both countries, the population will age, but the demographic dynamics are fundamentally different. According to our dynamic microsimulations, the labor force in the U.S. will increase by 17 percent between 2020 and 2060 (about 29 million workers) despite population aging. In contrast, the labor force in Germany will decline by 11 percent (about 4.5 million workers). Our baseline projections indicate that an expansion of education will increase the labor force by about 3 million persons in the United States and about half a million persons in Germany by 2060. In several what-if scenarios, we examine the effects of further expanding education and of removing health barriers on labor force participation. Higher educational attainment among those with currently low education has the largest impact on labor force participation, relative to the additional years of schooling. However, health improvements and the labor market integration of people with health limitations suggest a larger increase in labor force participation rates. Using Sweden as a benchmark, we show that reducing the health participation gap would increase the U.S. labor force by as much as 13 million people in 2060 (+6.8 percent compared to our baseline).

Background: Lower socioeconomic status is associated with poor health and more intensive healthcare system use. Less is known about the implications of socioeconomic disparities for healthcare costs in a cumulative perspective over the life course, accounting for the social gradients in longevity. We apply a dynamic microsimulation model to investigate socioeconomic differences in lifetime costs for healthcare services in Austria.Methods: We use education as an indicator of socioeconomic status. Information on healthcare consumption from the Austrian Health Interview Survey is combined with price weights for healthcare services to calculate average cost profiles by gender, age, and education consistent with aggregate System of Health Accounts. Dynamic microsimulation is used to project healthcare costs. We present lifetime costs estimated for the 2019 birth cohort, disentangling the impact of healthcare use and longevity by gender and education. Total system costs are projected in various scenarios.Results: We find a strong socioeconomic gradient in healthcare use and healthcare expenditure over the life course, which is more pronounced for men. Before considering social inequalities in mortality, men with compulsory education have close to 66% higher lifetime costs than men with tertiary education; for women, the difference is close to 20%. Accounting for longevity differentials reduces this gap to about 40% for men and 10% for women.Conclusions: Moving from a cross-sectional to a life course perspective is important to understand the distributional implications of healthcare system use. Microsimulation can identify the individual contribution of the various factors affecting future health system costs.

Abstract Background Employers play an important role in facilitating the return-to-work (RTW) of employees after a prolonged sick leave. The involvement of employers in RTW efforts is however largely unexplored in an international comparative context. This paper provides evidence on the diffusion of procedures to support RTW after sick leave in European workplaces and discusses different policy approaches to involve employers in RTW. Methods Employer activities are examined using microdata from the three waves of the European Survey on New and Emerging Risks (ESENER), collected in 2009, 2014 and 2019 (N = 47,425). ESENER is a representative company survey, conducted on behalf of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA). The outcome of interest is information on the existence of a procedure to support employees’ RTW after a long sickness absence. The analysis is carried out using logistic models, comparing countries and welfare state regimes. Results Overall, 71.8% percent of workplaces with more than 50 employees have procedures to support RTW. Employer support is most common in Nordic and Anglo-Saxon countries (OR = 3.2, 95% CI 2.58-4.05 and OR = 8.9, 95% CI 5.41-14.68 respectively, compared to Continental countries and accounting for firm size and sector of activity). In Southern and Eastern Europe, the diffusion of RTW support is lowest (OR = 0.3, 95% CI 0.26-0.37 and OR = 0.2, 95% CI 0.17-0.24). With the exception of Nordic and Anglo-Saxon countries, smaller establishments are significantly less likely to have procedures in place than larger ones. The observed patterns are stable over time. Conclusions Employer support for RTW varies greatly across countries and welfare state regimes, indicating that institutional settings and policies matter for employer involvement in RTW, particularly in smaller workplaces. Countries with high levels of RTW support display different combinations of legal obligations and/or incentives for employers to support RTW. Key messages • There are large differences in employer support for RTW after sick leave across Europe. • High support levels are associated with policies combining obligations and/or incentives for employers.

There is an increasing emphasis on activating workers on sick leave and on using their residual work capacity. This article compares activation via graded-work schemes in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands, with a focus on the role of employers. The analysis of literature sources and survey data reveals an ongoing reform activity, as well as great diversity in terms of employer obligations and incentives in the countries studied. These differences are very consequential for the intensity of employer efforts to activate sick-listed workers, even when comparing countries that otherwise share many institutional features. The distinction between public and privatised systems of sickness insurance, on the contrary, seems to be less relevant for the question of employer participation in activation. The findings are consistent with the expectation that less comprehensive employer participation is correlated with stronger selectivity in activation efforts. Depending on the prevailing approach in the individual countries and on developments to date, policy-makers are confronted with different challenges and priorities.

Measures to activate sick-listed workers and to combine work with sickness benefits are a growing but little-studied policy field. This article investigates graded sick leave benefits in Sweden, Finland and Germany. The analysis reveals some commonalities between countries, as well as substantial differences in terms of institutional background, benefit design and governance. The schemes range from models in which grading has become an integral component of the regular sickness certification process, to models in which the graded-work option is targeted at a much smaller category of workers and has a stronger therapeutic character. The variation in design and governance of the models is reflected in large differences in terms of their diffusion. All schemes face a common set of obstacles and challenges. They relate in particular to the distribution of stakeholders' roles and responsibilities, the involvement of employers and the assessment of residual work ability.

Grupo de autores, para alem dos nacionais: Werner Eichhorst, Paul Marx, Ulf Rinne, Rene Boheim, Thomas Leoni, Steven Tobin, Arthur Sweetman, Pierre Cahuc, Tommaso Colussi, Egbert L. W. Jongen, Paul Verstraten, Priscila Ferreira, Joao Cerejeira, Miguel Portela, Raul Ramos, Martin Kahanec, Monika Martiskova, Lena Hensvik, Oskar Nordstrom Skans, Patrick Arni, Rui Costa, Stephen Machin, Susan N. Houseman

Als Reaktion auf die COVID-19-Krise hat die Regierung ein Paket an Masnahmen zur Unterstutzung der Wirtschaft zusammengestellt. Dieser Bericht analysiert anhand von drei Sonderbefragungen des WIFO-Konjunkturtests die Inanspruchnahme und Einschatzung der Wirksamkeit der eingesetzten Instrumente auf Unternehmensebene. Die Mehrzahl der osterreichischen Unternehmen ist demnach erheblich von der Krise betroffen. Die Hilfen werden insgesamt weitgehend als hilfreich eingeschatzt, wobei sich die Beurteilung zwischen den Unternehmen unterscheidet. Jene Unternehmen, die die Unterstutzung als nicht ausreichend bezeichnen, melden uberwiegend geringe Liquiditatsreserven und sind tendenziell starker insolvenzgefahrdet. Auf Basis der vorliegenden Evidenz werden mogliche Mitnahme- und Missbrauchseffekte diskutiert.

In the coming years, demographic change will lead to an aging and subsequently shrinking workforce in most industrialized nations. As a result of the demographically induced shrinkage of the workforce, fewer and fewer people will contribute to generating a country's material prosperity. In 2019, the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) was commissioned by the Bertelsmann Stiftung to analyse the impact that the expected demographic development in selected industries will have on overall economic development and key macroeconomic variables (Macroeconomic Consequences of Ageing and Directed Technological Change). Based on these findings, the effects of demographic change on the economy are now estimated in more detail, considering the influence of education and health as well as better labour force integration of people with health problems on the development of labour force participation.

Trotz der merklichen Abkuhlung der Konjunktur im osterreichischen Ausenhandel und der Sachguterproduktion verbesserte sich die osterreichische Lohnstuckkostenposition in der Herstellung von Waren gegenuber dem gewichteten Durchschnitt der Handelspartner. Diese Entwicklung wurde durch die Lohnstuckkostendynamik in Deutschland mitbestimmt, wo die Produktivitat 2019 deutlich zuruckging. Die Wechselkursentwicklung des Euro trug zur Verbesserung der osterreichischen Lohnstuckkostenposition gegenuber dem Durchschnitt der Nicht-Euro-Handelspartner bei.

Der Einblick in die okonomischen Folgen von Arbeitsunfallen und arbeitsbedingten Krankheiten liefert Entscheidungstragern und Stakeholdern die Grundlage fur die Entwicklung von Praventivmasnahmen und Politiken zur Erhohung der Sicherheit und des Gesundheitsschutzes am Arbeitsplatz. Der vorliegende Bericht knupft an einen von der Europaischen Agentur fur Sicherheit und Gesundheit am Arbeitsplatz (EU-OSHA) entwickelten Ansatz an und ermittelt fur Osterreich die Folgekosten der todlichen und nicht-todlichen Unfalle und Erkrankungen, die auf Belastungen und gesundheitliche Risiken in der Arbeitswelt zuruckzufuhren sind. Eine umfassende Bewertung der arbeitsbedingten Krankheitslast berucksichtigt direkte, indirekte und intangible Kostenkomponenten.

Diese Studie untersucht die sozialen Unterschiede in der Inanspruchnahme des Gesundheitssystems anhand einer Analyse der Gesundheitskosten unterschiedlicher Bildungsgruppen im Lebensverlauf. Dazu werden in einem ersten Schritt durchschnittliche Alterskostenprofile fur Manner und Frauen nach hochster abgeschlossener Bildung ermittelt. In einem zweiten Schritt werden in einer dynamischen Mikrosimulation unter Berucksichtigung von Anderungen der Lebenserwartung und der Zusammensetzung der osterreichischen Bevolkerung nach Alter und Bildung die Gesundheitskosten einzelner Kohorten und insgesamt geschatzt. Hohere Bildung geht, wie die Ergebnisse zeigen, in den meisten Lebensabschnitten im Durchschnitt mit besserer Gesundheit und niedrigeren Gesundheitskosten einher. Durch den positiven Zusammenhang zwischen Bildung und Lebenserwartung hat hohere Bildung aber auch einen gegenteiligen Kosteneffekt. Der Gesamteffekt weist fur Manner und Frauen teils unterschiedliche Muster auf. Insgesamt hat die Verbesserung der Bildungsstruktur der Bevolkerung einen masig dampfenden Effekt auf die Kostendynamik im Gesundheitssystem, der einen Teil des Kostenanstieges infolge der Zunahme der Lebenserwartung kompensiert.

Despite sluggish growth in Austrian foreign trade and in manufacturing, the Austrian unit labour cost position in the manufacturing sector improved, compared to the weighted average of the trading partners. This development was partly determined by the unit labour cost dynamics in Germany, where productivity declined significantly in 2019. The exchange rate development of the euro contributed to the improvement of the Austrian unit labour cost position, compared to the average of the non-euro trading partners.

Country reports for Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States (153 Seiten)

We examine sickness absences on 'bridging days', i.e. Mondays and Fridays which fall between a weekend and a public holiday. Bridging days allow for a longer absence from work and increased utility from leisure, which could lead to increased shirking and absenteeism. We test this hypothesis using longitudinal social security data that cover the universe of private sector employees in a large Austrian region for a period of eleven years. Many public holidays are on different days of the week in different years and this variation identifies our causal estimate. We do not find any evidence for inflated sickness absence rates on bridging days. Quite conversely, sickness rates are consistently lower on bridging days than on regular Mondays and Fridays. Analysing diagnoses with symptoms that are hard to verify, we do not find indications for changes in employees' strategic behaviour. Our results are consistent with the explanation that more workers are on vacation on bridging days.

Die Arbeitskosten und die Belastung des Faktors Arbeit durch Lohnnebenkosten wirken sich auf die Beschaftigungsnachfrage aus und bilden einen erheblichen Kostenfaktor in der Produktion von Gutern und Dienstleistungen. Der vorliegende Bericht fasst die wichtigsten Erkenntnisse zu den Auswirkungen einer Lohnnebenkostensenkung und deren Finanzierungsoptionen aus der Literatur zusammen und untersucht konkrete Reformbeispiele in einer Auswahl von europaischen Landern. Diese Analysen sind in einen Uberblick uber Struktur und Hohe der Arbeitskosten sowie uber die Grundzuge des Sozialsystems in diesen Landern eingebettet.

Das neue WIFO-Radar der Wettbewerbsfahigkeit erfasst die Leistungsfahigkeit des Standortes Osterreich unter Berucksichtigung sozialer und okologischer Zielgrosen anhand von 24 ausgewahlten Indikatoren in vier Dimensionen. Stabile Werte im oberen Drittel verzeichnet es in Bezug auf die realen Pro-Kopf-Einkommen und den Ausenhandel. Hinsichtlich der Dimensionen soziale Lebensverhaltnisse und Einsatz naturlicher Ressourcen rangiert Osterreich zwar ebenfalls uber dem Durchschnitt, aber nur im europaischen Mittelfeld. Nach bestandigen masigen Positionsverlusten in den letzten Jahren liegt Osterreich im Durchschnitt aller Indikatoren knapp hinter dem oberen Drittel der europaischen Vergleichslander.

Die osterreichische Wirtschaft wuchs 2018 um 2,7% und damit etwas starker als im Jahr zuvor (+2,6%). Der Wachstumshohepunkt wurde jedoch bereits zu Jahresbeginn 2018 uberschritten. Vor dem Hintergrund welthandelspolitischer Spannungen (zwischen den USA und China) sowie der Abschwachung der Expansion im Euro-Raum kuhlte sich die Dynamik in Osterreich in der zweiten Jahreshalfte 2018 ab. Neben der Konjunktureintrubung in Italien und Frankreich dampften in Deutschland Produktionsausfalle in der Autoindustrie das Wachstum. Osterreichs Ausenhandel entwickelte sich 2018 insgesamt gunstig, verlor allerdings zum Jahresende an Schwung. Auch die Binnennachfrage trug positiv zum BIP-Wachstum bei. Die Konsumnachfrage der privaten Haushalte war erneut kraftig, zugleich steigerten die Unternehmen ihre Nachfrage nach Investitionsgutern (Ausrustungs- und Bauinvestitionen). Die Bauwirtschaft verzeichnete das zweite Jahr in Folge eine sehr gunstige Konjunktur. Auch in der Sachgutererzeugung wurde die Wertschopfung erneut merklich ausgeweitet, wenngleich sich die Industriekonjunktur spiegelbildlich zum Ausenhandel auf hohem Niveau abschwachte. Positive Impulse kamen vom Verkehrssektor, den sonstigen wirtschaftlichen Dienstleistungen und vom Tourismus. Die Inflation verharrte in Osterreich, gemessen am VPI, annahernd konstant bei 2,0%. Mit der Hochkonjunktur entspannte sich die Lage auf dem Arbeitsmarkt weiter. Die Beschaftigung wurde erneut ausgeweitet, und die Arbeitslosenquote (nationale Definition) sank auf 7,7%.