It has been revealed that Britain and Sweden's relatively low unemployment rates may be somewhat misleading if one considers the number of people calling in sick to work each day. At any one time, 14 percent of working-age Swedes are on either sickness or disability leave, a rate far higher than in most developed countries. Britain's "incapacity" benefits are higher than those in Germany and France, as well.
See "The Workplace: A sickness in official jobless data", Thomas Fuller, International Herald Tribune, September 20, 2005