SYDNEY - As the festive season gets into full swing, it's the heavy drinkers who are considered most likely to take a day or two off work to recover from hangovers.
But bosses take note: new research shows infrequent and light drinkers are the most likely to skipwork after a night out partying.
The finding was made by a team at Flinders University in Adelaide.
Using data collected for the 2001 National Drug Strategy survey, the researchers estimated 2.7 million days were missed in Australia that year at a cost of A$437 million ($505 million) due to alcohol use.
Workers who took time off due to illness or injury related to alcohol use caused 7.4 million work days to be lost at a cost of A$1.2 billion. And more women than men missed at least one day of work because they indulged a little bit too much in their favourite tipple.
The researchers said that contrary to traditional thinking, light to moderate drinkers are more likely to take a day off work with a hangover than heavy drinkers.
"This is due to the much larger numbers of workers who drink at these levels, compared with the numbers of workers who frequently drink at risky or high risk levels," their report said.
They found that together, the heavy drinkers, the low-risk drinkers (up to four drinks a day for men and two for women) and those who indulge about once a month accounted for 49-66 per cent of alcohol-related absenteeism from work.
They believe their findings suggest that alcohol-related absenteeism in the Australian workforce has been seriously underestimated.
A previous study for the 1998-99 financial year estimated the cost of alcohol-related absenteeism to be just A$35.2 million.
"These [latest] estimates are about 12 to 34 times greater than previous estimates based on national data," the researchers said.
