16-24 year old Students most likely to work when ill

Students regularly get a lot of slack about being lazy. Quite often, they are accussed of pulling a fast one to get the day off work when suffering from an oh-so-painful, contagious and almost life-threatening hangover.
However, Nuffield Health has found a rather large flaw in this stereotype.
Out of the 1,600 people that took part in the The Wellbeing at work survey, those aged 16 - 24 proved to be the most likely people to battle through a sickness bug and make it into work, especially if they worked in retail.
Although a quick polish of the halo seems in order, Nuffield Health claims that this surprising growth in young adult "mucus troopers" is most likely a consequence of the state of the economy, rather than down to many flawless consciences.
30% of those surveyed quoted the current economic climate as their reason for going into work sick.
Whilst a survey by the TUC found that 42 per cent of people who refused to take the day off sick did it because they didn't want to let their employers down, and 16 per cent were in fear of loosing pay.
However, "mucus trooping" is not necessarily as beneficial to the economy as we often believe it to be though. 'Employees going into work sick costs business dearly - up to £15 billion a year', said Marcus Powell, managing director of Nuffield Health.
He continued, 'the corporate world knows that staff wellbeing directly affects profits'.
Undoubtedly though, given the amount of slack directed towards young adults, these positive figures are finally something to be proud of.

Article taken from : http://www.thenationalstudent.com