Gen Z is redefining sick days

The kids are calling in sick to work. Not actual kids, who (hopefully) are not working, but Gen Zers. They're racking up sick days and taking more mental-health days. In the spring of their careers, they're even going on sabbatical. Gen Zers are setting a boundary, and that boundary is not being at work when they're not feeling up to it.

The amount of time people take off from their jobs has risen steadily over the past few years. Dayforce, a human-resources platform, said sick leave was up by 55% in 2023 compared with 2019 among companies that use its services in the US. Gusto, another HR platform, has similar findings: Using data from over 300,000 small and midsize businesses that use its platform, it found that 30% of workers in professional-services industries — meaning white-collar workers — took sick leave last year, a 42% jump from 2019. This year, it says, that figure has continued to climb.

While workers of all ages are taking more time away, it's young people who are really driving the shift. Gusto found that the 25-to-34 crowd was taking more sick time than older workers. Similarly, Dayforce found that people 35 and under had a 29% increase in sick leave since 2019, compared with a 16% increase for people over 35. Younger remote workers are taking more sick time than older ones, too. The same is true for extended leave: Gusto found at the start of the year that workers 22 to 26 were the most likely group to have taken a sabbatical, followed by 27- to 34-year-olds.

"There's just a generational shift towards balancing work life, taking care of your whole self and those sorts of things. I think that we've heard over and over again that Gen Z and younger millennials really prioritize those things," said Liz Wilke, a principal economist at Gusto. "People are just, I think, being a little more protective of their health and enforcing some work-life boundaries, especially around their health."

There is no single answer for why workers are taking more time off post-pandemic or why Gen Zers in particular feel more inclined to take time away from work than their older counterparts. When I asked experts in HR, workplace trends, and organizational psychology, they said a bunch of factors were coming into play.

For one thing, the pandemic has made people more health-conscious. The spread of COVID-19 was a stark reminder of the dangers of going to work sick, risking one's own health and the health of others. It may also be part of the trend of younger people engaging in fewer high-risk activities and being more aware of threats to their health and otherwise, said Kenneth Matos, the director of market insights at HiBob, an HR-tech company.

"A premium is now being placed culturally on caring for oneself and recognizing that sacrifice doesn't pay off, which is very opposite to sort of a boomer philosophy," he said.

The universe of acceptable reasons for people to take sick leave has expanded as well. It's not just a sore throat or the sniffles — mental-health days are taking up a bigger chunk of sick days. People are missing work because they're overwhelmed or burned out, or they just need a day to reset.

This is also fueling the relative increase in sick days among younger people. Gen Zers report feeling more stress and anxiety at work than other generations. They're also pretty comfortable discussing mental health at work (even when maybe they shouldn't). One recent report from a pair of UK think tanks found that the number of young people who were out of work because of illness, including mental illness, doubled since 2013. ComPsych, a global employee-assistance-program provider, conducted its own analysis of the 5,700 companies that use its services, which cover some 6 million workers, and found that mental-health-related leaves of absence increased by 300% from 2017 to 2023.

"We've seen this incredible rise in anxiety and burnout since the pandemic that really hasn't gone away. And I think that that has caused people to take more of an interest in physical and mental health, and especially younger generations," said Michelle Quist Ryder, the CEO of the American Psychological Foundation. "People understand the importance of stepping away from work."

There's also the changing calculus in employee-employer loyalty. After directly experiencing or seeing so many headlines about layoffs, Gen Zers may also just not see as much value in giving it their all on the job. If the powers that be see you as a line item they'd save money by crossing off, why bother stressing yourself out?

"There's also a reduction of faith in making sacrifices for your job paying off," Matos said. "So somebody saying, 'I'm not going to take the sick day, and I'm going to remote call in' is going to be like, 'And what am I getting for this?'"

Wilke, from Gusto, posited that Gen Z workers may be going into the office more than their older counterparts because they're more concerned about getting face time, learning from others, and socializing — meaning they're calling out sick because they can't physically show up to work. Then again, remote workers are calling in sick, too. Dayforce said remote workers on its platform were actually using sick time more than in-person workers. For some employees, working from home increases the pressure to log on regardless of how they feel, but it also signifies perhaps a more permissive, understanding vibe at the place of business.

"My hypothesis there is the company culture around it — that because they already have such a flexible working environment it's more acceptable for them to take the day," said Brittany Schmaling, a principal data analyst at Dayforce.

Many in-person workers don't have the same luxury of paid sick leave that remote workers do. It's a different calculation to call out sick when you work retail and won't get paid for the missed hours than it is when you've got some white-collar tech job with unlimited PTO.

Lots of workers — not to mention companies — could stand to take a page out of Gen Z's book. Presenteeism, meaning employees showing up to work when they're sick, is bad for workers and businesses. People who are working while they're ill aren't giving their best, for obvious reasons.

"If they take that sick day, hopefully they can just fully rest and then recover more quickly. But if they drag it out and they're working at the same time and not fully resting, it's actually going to harm them," said Malissa Clark, an associate professor and the head of the Healthy Work Lab at the University of Georgia. "By the downstream effects, it's going to affect their performance, and so it's going to affect the organization."

Taking necessary time off from work goes against some of the most toxic traits of American work culture. People take "quiet vacations" instead of actual vacations because they're scared to look like they're not sufficiently dedicated to the capitalist cause. Technology puts people's emails and Slack messages in their pockets, so they can never fully shut off. They feel pressure to be the "ideal worker," who's always available, doesn't complain, and doesn't let any of that pesky life stuff ever get in the way.

"We have a culture that glorifies overwork as an indication of commitment," said Mindy Shoss, a psychology professor at the University of Central Florida. And when people are concerned about keeping their jobs, that can be exacerbated. "People who are job insecure and worried about the future of their jobs are more likely to go ahead and work sick."

It's not clear that this trend will stick, or that some of the Gen Zers calling out once a month won't come to regret the amount of time they missed. While much of work culture has changed over the past few years, there's no guarantee that things won't eventually revert to how they were — hence the managers trying to push their workers to come back to the office and the companies deciding they may not need so many high-paid white-collar workers after all.

Managers remember who shows up and who doesn't. If an employee focuses too much on how much of a mental toll a job is taking, their boss may start to wonder if the position just isn't for them. Sometimes work is stressful, and you can't just tap out every time your pulse rises a little. Boundaries are healthy, but you also don't want to set them so hard you boundary yourself into unemployment.

Still, it's hard to look at America's approach to work and not think we could all stand to relax a little bit. One of the people I spoke with for this story mentioned she'd recently worked through COVID-19; another had it the day we spoke. Neither are Gen Z. Maybe the kids are onto something after all.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.