More Snow Days, Fewer Sick Days

The nonfarm payroll numbers for December came in much worse than expected. One possible reason, economists speculate, could have to do with unusually bad winter weather.

From another survey of the job market â€" conducted by polling households, rather than companies â€" we know that 273,000 people employed in the nonagricultural part of the economy reported not being able to work because of bad weather in December. (That would mean they did not go to work at all during the week covered by the survey.) That is the highest number for that month since 1977, the second year the government started keeping track.

Employed but Not at Work Because of Bad Weather, December, Nonagricultural Industries

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Numbers are not seasonally adjusted.

The Labor Department also records how many people don’t come to the jobs they have for other reasons: vacation, illness, a labor dispute or “other” (which includes child-care problems, parental leave, dog ate your homework, whatever). Last December had the highest share â€" 7.9 percent â€" of the no-shows blaming bad weather, as opposed to these other categories, of all Decembers since 1977.

Here’s a chart showing the various reasons that people cited for not going to work. (Note that this chart, unlike the one above, is for workers in all sectors rather than just the nonagricultural sector; the Labor Department does not report historical data on the number of nonagricultural workers not at their jobs for these other reasons, unfortunately.)

Share of Employed Workers Not at Work by Reason, December, All Industries

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Numbers are not seasonally adjusted.

Interestingly â€" particularly in the context of the debate over paid sick days â€" the share of people who missed work after calling in sick was at a record low for December, both in raw numbers (869,000) and as a share of all absentees (21.8 percent, versus the usual 31.5 percent).

The decline in illness-related absences is not just about the current flu season; if you look at the annual numbers, too, both the total number of people missing work and the share of all absentees out because of illness has been trending downward.

Number of People Employed but Not at Work by Reason, Annual, All Industries

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Of course, disability rolls have been rising, so maybe the people who used to miss work a lot have just been dropping out of the labor force altogether.

Note that the number of people who don’t go to work because they’re on vacation has also been falling, especially in the years since the financial crisis. That may reflect declines in the share of workers who get paid vacation days, which has been falling. Sick leave, by contrast, has become more common, even if it’s still not universal.

Back to snow days: It’s hard to know from these household survey data exactly how much the bad weather depressed the nonfarm payroll survey numbers last month, because of differences in the ways people are counted as “employed” in the payroll survey versus the household survey.

The payroll survey counts workers as employed as long as they were paid for at least one day in the pay period including the 12th of the month, regardless of whether they physically showed up at work. That means, in the payroll numbers, severe weather is more likely to have an impact on average weekly hours than on employment, the Labor Department says. Weekly hours did indeed go down, by 0.1 hour.

Even so, there are sectors where it looks as if the weather may have made a dent in overall employment, not just hours of those employed. Construction payrolls, for example, shrank by 16,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis.