Public and Private Sector Absence: Does it Differ?

Abstract

Although common perceptions suggest that public sector employees are more prone to being absent from work, little empirical attention has been given to the issue. In this paper, sector differences in absence are examined using data from a large, recently collected national data set—the 1992 Australian Dependent Care Study. After controlling for various demographic, attitudinal and job-related variables, the results indicate that public sector employees are 1.6 times more likely than private sector employees to be absent from work at least once in the course of a year. Further, the findings show that a number of reasons that have been snggested in the past may not be important in explaining sector differences in absence. Instead, differences in absence behaviour are more likely related to sector variation in job security, competitive pressure and the absetice milieu. © 1994, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.