Early 2022 saw a spike in employee absenteeism at Omicron hotspots in the US.

At the start of the year, the number of staff taking time off because they were sick with Covid-19—or caring for someone who was—increased, surpassing another significant cause of missed work: caring for children who were out of school due to the outbreak.

The increase in January 2021 differs significantly from the one last month in that many of the workers have been immunized.

While immunizations were scarce early last year, the Omicron variant’s vaccine resistance aided the spread of infections among employees, which had previously been limited to the unvaccinated.

According to the Census poll, almost 87 percent of adults who undertook any employment at the start of the year were vaccinated. At the start of the year, 6.6 million vaccinated workers and 2.1 million unvaccinated workers were out sick.

So, who was most likely to fall ill and skip work?

About 3 percent of workers who claimed they had received a two-dose vaccine said they had been unwell or caring for someone who was. Unvaccinated workers, on the other hand, missed work for similar reasons 5.7 percent of the time.

Meanwhile, workers who received the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine—the smallest subgroup of those vaccinated—were the most likely to have worked outside the home.

In the United States, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is the only single-dose vaccine that has been approved.

Workers with a higher salary were more likely to have received three or more Covid vaccine doses.

The Northeast had some of the highest increased rates statewide. In Vermont, more than 53 percent of adults said they had received at least three doses. The difference in enhanced rates between individuals earning less than $50,000 and those earning more than $50,000 in Washington, D.C. is 40 percentage points.

In Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming, however, more than one-fourth of the population is unvaccinated, with high-wage earners in each state being more likely to get vaccinated than lower-wage ones.

At the start of the year, the spike in sick workers impacted Maryland, New York, and Texas particularly hard, with more than 1 in 20 workers in each state unable to work because they were sick with Covid or caring for someone who was.

Covid school shutdown resulted in less than 1 percent of parents missing work in D.C. and Alabama. Although the number of people sickened by the virus was low in D.C., workers there were more likely to miss work for economic reasons, with more than 4 percent of respondents reporting they had been laid off or their workplace had closed as a result of the pandemic.

Image Credit: Getty

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