Researchers say alcohol and drug absenteeism is costing us billions

BEING hungover at work doesn’t just suck for you. It’s costing us billions of dollars a year in lost economic productivity.

AUSTRALIANS are off work for an estimated 11.5 million days annually because of the ill-effects of alcohol and illicit drugs.

This translates to a $3 billion cost to the economy — a massive jump from the $1.2 billion estimated cost in 2001, say Flinders University researchers.

Their new analysis has been published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health.

The university’s National Centre for Education and Training on Addiction analysis used two measures to work out the cost of alcohol and other drug related (AOD) absenteeism.

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One involved people self-reporting and found an estimated 2.5 million days were lost annually, at a cost of more than $680 million.

The second, which found an estimated 11.5 million days and a $3 billion cost, estimated the mean difference in absence for AOD users compared to abstainers.

The report’s lead author Professor Ann Roche said people often didn’t realise their alcohol intake was the cause of their absenteeism.

“Often people will have a lot to drink on Friday or Saturday and then have diarrhoea or gastro type symptoms on a Monday morning that are a direct result of the alcohol, but they don’t connect these with their drinking,” she said.

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The analysis looked at the most recent National Drug Strategy Household Survey (2013) and research in 2014 and 2015.

Among the 12,196 people surveyed, 56.1 per cent drank at a low-risk level, 26.6 per cent drank at risky levels and 9.3 per cent at high-risk levels, while eight per cent abstained.

Almost half had never used any illicit drug, while 34.9 per cent had not used within the past year and 7.3 per cent used yearly, 2.9 per cent monthly, and 5.4 per cent weekly.

The big increase in cost to the economy flowed from a small proportion of workers who were drinking more and those who were using stimulants to keep themselves going, Prof Roche said.

She called for Australian businesses to implement strategies to promote healthy behaviour among their employees and reduce the costs of AOD related absenteeism.