Who Pays for an Always-On Society?
Europe’s growing tension between work, care and recovery.
Europe asks people to work, care, adapt and remain available. When mental health deteriorates, the consequences appear in sick leave, household finances and disability systems. Rising long-term incapacity raises a difficult question: how much responsibility should individuals carry when the demands placed on them are shaped by employers, public policy and the organisation of everyday life?
Reported symptoms, sickness absence and disability benefits measure different things. Together, they warrant scrutiny of how societies distribute pressure, protect recovery and allocate the costs when people can no longer cope.
🟦 What does rising mental-health-related incapacity actually tell us?
It establishes a growing burden. It does not establish a single cause.
Belgium’s RIZIV reports that mental disorders accounted for 38.3% of people recognised as unable to work for more than one year at the end of 2025. The number in that position because of depression or burnout increased by 32% between 2021 and 2025. These figures describe an existing caseload, rather than new claims alone, and do not distinguish work-related from other causes.
Dutch survey data provide a different measure: approximately one in five employees reported burnout symptoms in 2025. That indicator measures work-related psychological exhaustion, not clinically established burnout or incapacity for work.
Neither dataset, on its own, demonstrates that society is becoming uniformly more demanding. Both raise questions about prevention, support and the conditions under which people remain able to work.
🟦 Who can afford to recover?
Recovery requires time, practical support and the freedom to become unavailable.
Advice to rest assumes that people can reduce their obligations. A worker may have little influence over shifts. A parent may lack affordable childcare. A carer may have nobody available to take over.
Digital connectivity can further change the character of time away from work. An evening becomes provisional when a message might require a response: attention remains partly committed even before another task arrives.
Eurofound’s analysis of its 2024 working conditions survey found that one in five EU workers reported work-related contact outside working hours several times a month. More frequent contact was associated with higher reported stress; that association alone does not establish causation.
The practical test is whether people can disengage without jeopardising their income, professional standing or care responsibilities. A nominally free evening offers limited protection if someone must remain on standby throughout it.
🟦 Why strengthen resilience if the workload remains unchanged?
Individual support cannot substitute for addressing preventable organisational risks.
The WHO identifies excessive workloads, understaffing, inflexible hours and limited control over work as risks to mental health. It recommends organisational interventions that assess and change the conditions creating those risks.
Counselling, treatment and stress-management support can be valuable. Their availability does not establish that an employer has addressed excessive demands.
The accountability test is concrete: what changed in staffing, scheduling, supervision or decision-making after a risk was identified?
The same applies to digital boundaries. Eurofound’s research stresses that a disconnection policy needs practical implementation and attention to the workload driving excessive connection. Permission to ignore messages achieves little if completing assigned work still requires unpaid evening availability.
🟦 Can Europe increase employment without reorganising care?
Employment ambitions depend partly on the infrastructure supporting life outside work.
The EU’s 2030 target is employment for at least 78% of people aged 20–64. It measures the proportion in employment, rather than prescribing working hours.
Achieving sustainable participation nevertheless requires attention to childcare, long-term care, transport and predictable schedules. The same hour cannot simultaneously meet an employer’s staffing requirement and a family’s care obligation.
Where accessible services are unavailable, households must find another arrangement: reduce paid work, purchase support or absorb additional unpaid demands.
The institutional test is whether employment policy and care provision are planned together. More people entering work is a measurable achievement. Whether they can remain there without an unsustainable accumulation of responsibilities requires a broader assessment.
🟦 Who pays when pressure becomes prolonged absence?
The costs spread—and unresolved staffing pressure can compound them.
Belgium spent more than €2.5 billion in 2024 on benefits for incapacity lasting longer than one year attributed to depression or burnout. That covers benefit expenditure, rather than the full cost to society.
Individuals can face financial insecurity and disruption to family and professional life. Employers lose capacity. Colleagues may inherit additional tasks.
Where replacement capacity is limited, this creates a potential feedback loop: absence increases demands on remaining staff, adding to risks already associated with excessive workload and understaffing. Prevention therefore concerns service continuity as well as individual health.
Responsibility cannot be allocated from aggregate statistics alone. Employers also bear substantial costs. But an assessment remains incomplete if it counts immediate staffing savings without examining the later costs carried by workers, households and public systems.
🟦 What counts as recovery if the original conditions remain?
Sustainable return requires attention to both health and the demands awaiting the person.
Clinical improvement and readiness to resume the previous workload are separate assessments. Relevant questions include working hours, task intensity, managerial support and the scope for adjustments.
The WHO recommends combining work-directed measures, including reasonable accommodations or phased return, with ongoing clinical care where appropriate.
Employers cannot resolve every source of distress. Public services cannot remove every personal difficulty. Each can examine the demands and support within its control.
Recording a return date is therefore insufficient. The stronger test is whether someone can remain in work without repeatedly exceeding their capacity—and whether identified risks have actually been reduced.
Signal
Europe’s mental-health-related incapacity burden demands treatment, income protection and credible prevention. Accountability must extend to institutions shaping demands on people’s time: what changes when those demands become unsustainable, and who ultimately carries the cost when recovery has no room in the schedule?
Image credit
AI-generated photographic illustration: Altair Media / OpenAI.
Caption
When the working day follows people home: competing demands from employment, care and digital availability can leave little room for recovery. AI-generated conceptual image; no real person or documented event is depicted.
