Only one out of 100 Americans has missed work because of the coronavirus, but Blacks and residents of rural areas are far likelier to call out sick than other Americans, according to a new estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fully 2.5% of Blacks and 1.3% of Hispanics missed work at least one day of work during survey periods this summer because of illness associated with the novel coronavirus, a Research and Development Survey (RANDS), a statistical research arm of the CDC, said in a report published Wednesday. By comparison, 0.5% of Whites had missed a day of work during the same period.
The report also found that 1.6% of residents of “non-metropolitan” areas suffered a sick-related job absence, versus only 0.8% of larger areas. The CDC classifies metropolitan counties as those with at least 250,000 residents.
The overall percentage of Americans who have missed work because of a COVID-19 illness is 0.9%. The report’s authors cautioned that the methodology is “not designed to replace” the National Center for Health Statistics’ “higher quality, core data collections.”
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