U.S. Short-Term Disability (STD) and Sick Leave Cost Projections for Employee COVID-19 Cases

To provide insights into the financial burden of COVID-19 associated with lost work time costs, IBI reviewed employment, wage and leave benefit data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and lost workday experiences contained in IBI’s dataset of employer-sponsored short-term disability (STD) claims to estimate the incidence and absence compensation for employees who take extended sick days or STD leaves for a coronavirus diagnosis. To help support the public policy discussion on strategies to respond to the pandemic, the analysis offers insights into low-, mid- and high-range scenarios depending on the total COVID-19 cases across the country.