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Study says workers' pain costs businesses billions

By Lindsey Tanner
The Associated Press

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CHICAGO — Headaches, back pain, arthritis and other muscle and joint pain cost the nation's employers more than $60 billion a year in lost productivity, a study has found.

Most of those costs are from sub-par job performance as a result of the pain rather than absenteeism, according to the study, based on a telephone survey of 28,902 workers in a wide variety of blue-collar and white-collar professions.

The study focuses on some of the most common pains that affect both men and women. It doesn't include some common conditions such as dental pain and menstrual pain.

Even so, the economic costs are enormous, said Catherine DeAngelis, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The study appears in today's JAMA, a theme issue featuring pain-related research.

The total nationwide cost of pain-related lost productivity was estimated at $61.2 billion yearly, based on a formula using wage data and including converting reduced performance into lost hours.

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