Comparability

Comparability - geographical

The statistics are heavily influenced by local Danish legislation, making comparison with similar statistics in other countries difficult.

Comparability over time

For the current dataset, which covers the period 2020-2024, there are the following significant changes

• Years 2020-2021: From 27 February 2020 to 30 June 2021, an extended right to reimbursement for salary or sickness benefits paid to employees and self-employed persons who were absent due to Covid-19 applied.
• Years 2021-2022: From 23 November 2021 to 28 February 2022, an extended right to reimbursement of wages or sickness benefits paid to employees or self-employed persons who were absent due to Covid-19 applied.

There is another dataset that covers the period 1995 to 2019.
In this dataset, the following significant changes have been made

• Year 2000: Public sector employees are included.
• Year 2007, 2 April: employer period increases from 14 to 15 days, which means fewer days of sick pay.
• Year 2008 2 June: employer period increases from 15 to 21 days, which means fewer days of sick pay.
• Year 2012, 2 January: employer period increases from 21 to 30 days, which means fewer days of sick pay.
• Year 2014: A new sickness benefit reform comes into force in summer 2014. The case processing of people on long-term sick leave in particular is changed.
• Year 2015, 1 May: Unemployed people are paid unemployment benefit during the first two weeks of illness instead of sickness benefit.
• Year 2020: A new IT system for the administration of sickness benefits is introduced.

Coherence - cross domain

Figures from Sickness Benefits are included in the statistics, Publicly Supported Persons, Labour Market Accounts and Absence, where the extent of absence due to illness is put into a larger context. However, for the Publicly Dependent statistics, days on sickness benefits are downgraded in cases where there is conflicting information, so the figures will rarely be exactly the same as in the primary statistics. Furthermore, the Ministry of Employment publishes monthly figures on the number of sickness benefit recipients on Jobindsats. However, the Ministry's method of calculation does not coincide with Statistics Denmark's.

Coherence - internal

Data is consistent.