Employee Absence Statistics: 3.2% Rate

The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics annual data puts the US employee absence rate at 3.2%. The corresponding lost-worktime rate is 1.7%, meaning absences account for 1.7% of the hours full-time wage and salary employees usually work.

This reference page contains the 2025 national benchmark, occupation and industry comparisons, transparent lost-hours calculations, a source table, and the definitions you need before citing the numbers.

Quick employee absence statistics

1. 3.2%: total US absence rate for full-time wage and salary workers in 2025.
2. 2.2%: absence rate attributed to illness or injury.
3. 1.0%: absence rate attributed to other qualifying reasons.
4. 1.7%: share of usual work hours lost to absences.
5. 4.3%: personal care and service occupation absence rate, the highest listed occupational rate.
6. 4.1%: healthcare support occupation absence rate.
7. 4.0%: food preparation and serving occupation absence rate.
8. 4.2% vs 3.0%: public-sector and private-sector absence rates.
9. 121.3 million: full-time wage and salary workers represented in the BLS table.
10. 68 hours per week: illustrative lost time for 100 employees scheduled for 40 hours each at the 1.7% national lost-worktime rate.
11. $225.8 billion: CDC Foundation's 2015 estimate of annual US productivity losses from worker illness and injury.

BLS 2025 annual data

Employee absence rate explorer

Compare absence rates by occupation or industry. The US benchmark is 3.2%.

OccupationsIndustries

Show reason breakdown

Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPS Table 47, 2025. Components may not sum to the displayed total because of rounding. The 2025 estimates exclude October and are not strictly comparable with earlier annual averages.

What the BLS absence rate actually measures

The BLS definition is broader than a workplace no-show. It covers full-time employees who usually work at least 35 hours but worked fewer than 35 hours during the reference week for one of these reasons:

• their own illness, injury, or medical problem
• childcare problems
• other family or personal obligations
• civic or military duty
• maternity or paternity leave

It excludes vacation, personal days, holidays, labor disputes, and other reasons outside the definition. It also excludes self-employed workers.

A no-show is narrower: someone misses a scheduled shift without adequate notice. The public BLS table does not isolate that behavior, so the 3.2% national absence rate should not be presented as a 3.2% no-show rate.

That distinction matters. Absence data can help managers plan capacity, but it cannot tell you how many people failed to communicate or violated an attendance policy.

Absence rates by occupation

These are occupation-level rates from the 2025 BLS annual table. Occupation describes the work a person does, not the industry that employs them.

Source: BLS Table 47, 2025 annual averages. Components may not sum to the displayed total because of rounding.

The highest listed rate was 4.3% for personal care and service occupations, about 34% above the 3.2% all-occupation rate. Healthcare support was close behind at 4.1%.

Absence rates by industry

Industry describes the employer's business. A cook working in a hospital, for example, can sit in a food-service occupation while being employed in the healthcare industry.

Source: BLS Table 47, 2025 annual averages. Components may not sum to the displayed total because of rounding.

The 4.2% public-sector rate was 40% higher than the 3.0% private-sector rate. Health care and social assistance was 27% above the private-sector benchmark.

Translate 1.7% lost worktime into staffing capacity

The lost-worktime rate is often more useful for scheduling than the worker absence rate because it measures hours missed as a share of hours usually worked.

For 100 full-time employees scheduled for 40 hours per week:

100 employees x 40 hours x 1.7% = 68 hours lost per week

Annualized across 52 weeks, that is 3,536 hours, or the equivalent of about 1.7 full-time 40-hour schedules. This is an illustrative capacity calculation, not a forecast for every team. Your actual rate depends on workforce mix, seasonality, leave policy, and the way absences are recorded.

What employee absence costs

The cleanest widely cited public cost estimate is old enough to need a warning label. In 2015, the CDC Foundation reported that worker illness and injury cost US employers $225.8 billion per year in lost productivity, equal to $1,685 per employee.

That figure is useful as historical context, not as a 2026 current-dollar benchmark. It should not be silently inflation-adjusted or mixed with the BLS absence rate as if both came from the same study.

For an individual team, build the cost estimate from records you control:

1. scheduled hours missed
2. paid leave or direct wage cost
3. overtime or replacement coverage
4. manager time spent finding coverage
5. measurable lost output, refunds, or service delays

This produces a defensible local estimate instead of a universal cost-per-no-show number that may not fit your operation.

What managers can actually change

Managers cannot schedule away illness or family emergencies. They can reduce the operational damage and remove avoidable friction.

• Publish schedules earlier. More notice gives employees time to raise conflicts before the shift.
• Collect availability before assigning shifts. A schedule built against real availability starts with fewer collisions.
• Make shift swaps visible and documented. Employees have a clean route to solve a conflict without leaving the manager to reconstruct a text thread.
• Use open shifts for replacement coverage. A known pool of available employees is safer than calling down a stale contact list.
• Keep clock and timesheet records together. Managers can compare scheduled hours, worked hours, overtime, and absence patterns without guessing.
• Separate absence from misconduct. Illness, approved leave, a communicated callout, and a no-show are not the same event.

For prevention tactics, use the guide to reduce no-shows and callouts. If one absence repeatedly breaks the day, the deeper problem may be coverage design rather than one unreliable employee. If absence clusters around repeated overload rather than misconduct, compare the current employee burnout statistics. For the overtime consequence, use the latest overtime statistics.

Source table

Methodology and limitations

This page uses BLS Current Population Survey Table 47 for 2025. The absence rate is the ratio of workers with qualifying absences to full-time wage and salary employment. The lost-worktime rate is hours absent as a percentage of hours usually worked.

The 2025 annual figures are 11-month averages that exclude October because CPS data were not collected during the federal government shutdown. BLS also introduced the 2022 Census industry classification system with January 2025 data. For both reasons, BLS says the 2025 estimates are not strictly comparable with earlier annual averages. This page does not claim a year-over-year trend.

The 68-hour weekly example applies the 1.7% national lost-worktime rate to 4,000 scheduled hours. The 3,536-hour annual figure multiplies that weekly result by 52. Both are planning illustrations, not observed Turnozo customer outcomes.