The reported average of 20 days is likely skewed by a small number of long leaves and I suspect* is nowhere near typical for the median worker (it's nearly taking a day off every two weeks).

Longer leave already requires a doctor's approval so the proposal to require that for all leave is unlikely to change much other than drown doctors in more busy work.

*I can't find much for the 'median' amount of leave taken per year.

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uniqueuid 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's exactly right.

This article [1] mentions 40% of sick days being from people with long-term (> 6 weeks) illnesses. That's data from one of Germany's large insurers. While I don't know the proportion of those with long-term illnesses, if we assume it's at most 10%, then the average for people with "normal" short-term illnesses is at most 12 days. So much lower.

[1] https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/sind-die-deutschen-wirklich-h...

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realaleris149 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> from one of Germany's large insurers

Is this voluntary insurance? It changes meaning to the statistic to % from those that made an insurance.

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uniqueuid 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I assume you mean there might be a self-selection issue with people who are voluntarily ("privately") insured, as compared to those who have the normal state-mandated ("gesetzlich") insurance?

This data is from AOK which is one of the state-mandated insurers. It insures around 2M people, and my gut feeling is that they are not terribly unrepresentative of the workforce as a whole.

But of course the point is, everyone with a tiny bit of true data could tell much more precise stories, and the journalists (as usual) didn't care or didn't think it would fly with readers.

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TomK32 2 hours ago | parent [-]

AOK insured 27 million in 2021, couldn't find a more recent number.

	▲	uniqueuid an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Whoops, misread the digit! Thanks for catching. But the numbers are still the same (it's about rates not counts), just that we can expect the 40% figure to be more accurate than with 2M.

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mejutoco 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In Germany you need an insurance, but you can choose which one. In Berlin at least I remember TK was the default, but you can choose others.

	▲	mimischi an hour ago \| parent [-]
		For clarification, “default” above doesn’t mean “In Berlin you get insured with TK by default”, and rather “Most people in Berlin will recommend choosing TK over a different state-mandated insurer”. TK was also very popular when I was back in university in Frankfurt. It might just still be the one with reasonable prices!

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pfortuny 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I guess they do not understand the relevance of the median in this. They just take the average and think it is "good enough"...

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uniqueuid 2 hours ago | parent [-]

To be fair, the median is just as little information as the mean. We live in a world where ink is cheap, they should just show a histogram.

	▲	tancop an hour ago \| parent [-]
		in this case the median matters a lot more. most people either get sick for a couple days to weeks with something like the flu, or get a more serious illness/injury like a complex fracture that takes them out for months. the first type is much more common but the long leave cases push up the mean.