Which countries offer the best sick pay in 2025?

The importance of sick pay

Sick pay is an essential part of the socio-economic contract and contributes to public health improvements and individual well-being. It also potentially boosts employment rates and employee engagement.

A decent sick leave policy can also reduce the cost of “presenteeism” – the lower productivity of employees who work on through illness or injury instead of taking time off to recover. The annual cost of presenteeism to UK businesses has risen by $25 billion over the last half-decade, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). Many can’t afford to take time off on heavily reduced pay, and economic pressure to work through illness or injury increases the risk of illness spreading through the workplace, among other health and safety issues.

The UK’s current sick pay system

The UK government requires employers to pay £118.75 per week of Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) for up to 28 weeks if an employee cannot work due to illness. Employees do not receive SSP for the first three days of illness unless they’ve received SSP within the previous eight weeks (for our calculations, we have assumed our hypothetical worker has not received SSP lately). This is likely to change in April 2026, with new rules entitling workers to SSP from the first day of illness and the removal of the lower earnings threshold.

The UK’s 4.4 million self-employed workers are not eligible for SSP but may be able to access money through the government’s Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).

How the UK compares globally

Given that the first three days of sick leave go unpaid, Brits are entitled to just £47.50 for their first week of sick leave. This positions UK rates between those of Indonesia (£45.40) and Sri Lanka (£51.41) and below every European country except for Armenia (£43.17). When calculated in international dollars – a hypothetical currency that allows for local purchasing power – the UK ranks 95th in the world (Intl$69.92).

To compare UK sick pay rates to those around the world, Moorepay has calculated the amount of sick pay a resident would receive for the first week of sick leave, taking into account the national adjusted net income per capita for each country (from the World Bank). Then, we converted these figures into U.S. Dollars, GBP and international dollars, a hypothetical currency the World Bank uses to create a realistic comparison of the buying power of local currencies, which reflects the “comparable amount of goods and services a U.S. dollar would buy in the United States.”

We also ranked countries based on the average number of sick days that are taken yearly in each country using World Health Organization data and local reports.

Comparing Sick Pay Across Countries

First, we compared statutory sick pay for the first week of leave in absolute terms by converting all local figures to GBP. We also compared sick pay using local purchasing power-adjusted international dollars to get an understanding of the true relative value of each country’s sick pay locally. You can see the figures in the table below, and toggle between the charts for GBP and international dollars ($Intl).

Six of the countries with the top ten highest sick pay in absolute terms (GBP) are among the ten countries with the highest GDP per capita for which reliable sick pay data was available. This is partly because, unlike the UK, many countries calculate sick pay as a proportion of the employee’s salary; thus, the countries with the highest salaries have the best sick pay. In these cases, we used the average local salary to calculate the likely level of sick pay.

Next, we used World Health Organization (WHO) figures to compare the number of sick days taken by the average worker in each country. WHO maintains this data on 37 countries, and of these, Poland has the highest absentee rate, with the average worker taking 34.0 days off. 

The employer is obliged to pay most Polish employees under 50 sick pay at 80% of their salary for the first 33 days of leave in a given year, after which Poland’s Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) takes over; for those over 50, responsibility to pay switches to ZUS after 14 days. Since January 2025, ZUS has had stronger powers to monitor the veracity of sick pay claims, including checking workers’ social media posts for clues that they are on holiday or renovating their home. In 2024, ZUS suspended around 640,000 PLN (£131,273) in sick pay for false claimants.

When the UK’s NHS and National Insurance scheme were first developed in the 1940s, one GP joked in The Lancet that the “government is going to control the doctor, because if the doctor were not controlled, he might be ‘lax or dishonest’ or worse still, he might treat his patients with kindness and humanity.”

Eighty years on, the flat rate of sick pay feels equally blunt, leaving those with higher monthly expenses at a greater loss. But the present rate of £118.75 per week (after the first three days) leaves even lower-income households short of the cost of food, housing, fuel and power, according to the Health Foundation (using government figures). This explains, in part, why just over half of employers offer an occupational sick pay scheme on top of the statutory requirement.

You can use this interactive table to compare the UK’s statutory sick pay against other countries in GBP or converted to international dollars to allow for local purchasing power.

Methodology & Sources

To find out which countries have the best statutory sick leave pay, we carried out manual research to look for the sick pay legislation in every country.

We calculated the amount of sick pay a resident would receive for the first week (five working days) of sick leave. Many countries have a waiting period whereby you don’t receive pay for the first few days of sick leave, reducing those countries’ figures. Where sick pay was applicable at a given percentage of income, we used the national adjusted net income per capita for each country (from the World Bank) to reach a figure. In situations where multiple compensation bands (percentage rates) were stated depending on the number of insured years, we took the maximum value. Where pertinent, we assumed the cause of illness was “general” rather than “occupational.”

Once we had figures for each country in the local currency, we converted them into U.S. Dollars, GBP and international dollars (applying World Bank Price Parity exchange rates) for additional comparisons. The latter is used to compare sick leave pay across countries while accounting for the cost of living.

In addition, we ranked countries based on the average number of sick days that are taken yearly in each country. The data was partially taken from the World Health Organization’s dataset, with the remaining countries sourced from local reporting.

Data is correct as of October 2025.