From 2013 to 2025, sick leave taken by Catalan workers has more than doubled, and of these, leave due to mental health reasons has almost tripled, in this case between 2015 and 2024. The data comes from a report presented by the employers' association Pimec. one of the major current concerns of the business communityWhile thirteen years ago a total of 773,000 sick leaves were recorded in Catalonia, in 2024 this figure skyrocketed to 2,093,000. The study shows that the Principality has gone from an average of 3.8 hours of sick leave per month per worker – this indicator excludes vacations and other leaves, such as maternity or personal leave – to 8 hours recorded in the third quarter of last year, an increase of 110%. Even so, most of these absences from work are short. In more than 75% of cases, the leaves did not exceed 15 days. In fact, the employers' association also notes that while the number of temporary disabilities has steadily increased (+170% between 2013 and 2024), the duration has decreased: it averages 27.2 days, the second lowest figure among the autonomous communities, surpassed only by Navarre's 26.5 days. Paradoxically, Navarre and Catalonia have the highest average monthly incidence of sick leave, at 56.4 and 52.6 workers per 1,000, respectively. "We have a structural problem. We can't get on a highway, see cars going the wrong way, and think they're the crazy ones," lamented Antoni Cañete, president of Pimec. However, he assured that employers do not intend to "penalize" employees for being sick, but rather to prevent the misuse of the system.

After a very sudden peak, the curve flattens and normalizes. This is the behavior of teleworking in Catalonia, a work modality that has become established in our country and is now stable after the strong boost caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. This is reflected in the Skills and Occupations Barometer A report presented this Tuesday by the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and the Catalan employers' association Pimec focuses on this new way of organizing work. The report analyzes more than two million job vacancies published between 2018 and 2024 and shows that, although in-person work remains the norm, remote work—especially in a hybrid format—is a structural element of the Catalan labor market. Even so, only 10% of the job offers filtered by this study offer the possibility of working remotely. According to the data collected by this research, teleworking went from appearing in 0.9% of job vacancies in 2019 to 10.2% in 2024, after reaching a peak of 12.9% in 2022. This growth has been driven by other factors such as improvements in high-speed internet, the need for a better work-life balance, and the demand to reduce commuting to avoid deficiencies in public transportation. For workers, the fact that companies are offering this option is increasingly common. "The trend is towards a hybrid model," explains Paula Pedro, a researcher at the UOC's Labor Market Research and Analysis Unit. The combination of in-person and remote work is gaining ground on the 100% remote format, which has already fallen slightly below 8%. However, hybrid teleworking still lags behind, appearing in about 4% of job openings. While the percentage of companies that do not allow working from home is decreasing, it remains higher – above 4%. Another conclusion of the barometer is that the option to telework is a Barcelona privilege. Of all the job openings that mention this modality, 92.3% are concentrated in the Barcelona area. In this region, 12.3% of job offers allow remote work; while in Lleida only 1.6% facilitate it; in Girona, 1.7%; And in Tarragona, 2.8%. "It's a matter of the productive sector, but also of mobility difficulties. Deficiencies in public transport contribute to a greater demand for teleworking days," argued the Secretary General of Pimec, Josep Ginesta, during the presentation of the report.