\n<\/p>\n
German officials insist their economy doesn\u2019t merit the \u201csick man of Europe\u201d label, but a new study suggests illness is really playing a part in its poor performance.<\/p>\n
Gross domestic product would have risen 0.5 per cent last year if it hadn\u2019t been for work absences due to poor health \u2014 a tally that surpassed pandemic totals to reach a record in 2023, according to analysis by VFA, Germany\u2019s association of research-based pharmaceutical companies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Article content<\/p>\n
Some \u20ac26 billion (US$28.2 billion) in real income was lost due to illnesses among employees \u2014 equivalent to about 0.8 percentage point of total output, economists Claus Michelsen and Simon Junker wrote in a report released on Jan. 26. High levels of absences in November and December point to another hit in the current quarter too.<\/p>\n The German economy shrank 0.3 per cent in 2023, its worst performance in two decades barring the financial crisis year of 2009, and 2020, when the pandemic hit. Its underperformance compared to regional peers was so pronounced that it evoked the \u201csick man of Europe\u201d label previously used to describe it a quarter century ago.<\/p>\n Bundesbank president Joachim Nagel has rejected the comparison, and last week, Finance Minister Christian Lindner insisted the country was more like a tired man just needing coffee.<\/p>\n \u201cIn 2023, Germany was the \u2018sick man\u2019 in the truest sense of the word \u2014 its economic performance was significantly more affected by the wave of illness than in other countries,\u201d Michelsen and Junker wrote. \u201cWhat\u2019s still true though is that Germany\u2019s economy faces significant structural problems and is confronted with major challenges in international competition.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Share this article in your social network<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n Article content German officials insist their economy doesn\u2019t merit the \u201csick man of Europe\u201d label, but a new study suggests illness is really playing a part in its poor performance….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-43119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/43120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Germany the ‘sick man of Europe’ after all as illness cripples economy<\/a>
\n
2024-01-26 14:32:42<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"