Close up on a file tab with the word employees plus a note with the text sick leaves, blur effect at the background. Concept image for illustration of sick leave

Nursing and residential care facilities saw a year-over-year decrease in employer-reported workplace illnesses, from 7.9 cases per 100 full-time equivalent employees in 2020 to four cases per 100 FTE employees in 2021. That’s according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The incidence of cases still is higher than pre-pandemic accounts, with 1.7 cases per 100 FTE employees reported in 2019.

Among the healthcare industry, three sectors had decreases in estimates involving days away from work rates in 2021. In addition to nursing and residential care facilities, hospitals reported 2.3 cases per 100 FTE workers in 2021, down from 3.7 cases in 2020, and ambulatory healthcare services reported 1.1 reported per FTE workers, down from 1.2 cases the prior year.

The decline in employer-reported workplace illnesses, according to the BLS, was due to a drop in COVID-19-reported illness cases. Overall, the data, based on the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, show that private-industry employers reported 365,200 nonfatal illnesses of coronavirus in 2021, down from 544,600 in 2020, representing a decrease of 32.9%.

Healthcare and social assistance (including nursing and residential care facilities) was the only private-industry sector that had a decrease in the total number of cases in 2021, decreasing 183,200 cases to 623,000 year-over-year. According to BLS, this change was driven by a 163,600 decrease in the number of respiratory illness cases in 2021, bringing the number to 145,300. By comparison, in 2019, there were 3,500 respiratory illness cases in the private-industry healthcare and social assistance sector.

“Despite having a decrease in cases, the healthcare and social assistance sector had the highest rate of respiratory illnesses in 2021, with 99.2 cases per 10,000 FTE workers. This rate, however, is 52.7% lower than in 2020 when the rate was 209.8 cases per 10,000 FTE workers,” the BLS said.

Healthcare / social services and retail combined accounted for 69.5% of the 269,600 total respiratory illness cases reported in the United States in 2021.