Sick pay in Austria: how Entgeltfortzahlung and Krankengeld work

When an employee in Austria falls ill, the employer pays first and the health insurer second. Under the rules on Entgeltfortzahlung (continued pay during sickness), the employer keeps paying the salary for a set number of weeks at full rate, then for four weeks at half rate. Once that entitlement is used up, the employee turns to ÖGK, the Austrian health insurance fund, for sickness benefit (Krankengeld).

Since 2018 the same scale has applied to white-collar and blue-collar employees, so there is one set of numbers to learn. The length of full pay depends on how long the person has worked for you, and the entitlement is measured per work year, which means it renews each year rather than being used up once for the whole employment.

For a foreign employer the practical message is simple. Sickness is a cost the business carries directly for the first weeks, it runs through ordinary payroll, and it should be in the budget for every Austrian hire from the first month.

Every new hire starts at the bottom of the scale, whoever employs them. Someone joining an Austrian team through an employer of record begins their first work year with six weeks of full pay available, exactly as they would on a company’s own payroll, and moves up the scale on the same anniversaries.

The number of weeks on full and half pay steps up with service. Per work year, the 2026 scale is:

• service up to one year: six weeks on full pay, then four weeks on half pay;
• more than one year: eight weeks on full pay, then four weeks on half pay;
• more than fifteen years: ten weeks on full pay, then four weeks on half pay;
• more than twenty-five years: twelve weeks on full pay, then four weeks on half pay.

The half-pay block stays at four weeks across every band, and only the full-pay block grows. An employee in the first year of service therefore has up to ten weeks of employer-paid sickness in that year, six of them at full salary. After twenty-five years the total reaches sixteen weeks.

In payroll terms, the full-pay weeks look like any other month on the payslip, and the half-pay weeks show the salary reduced by half for the days concerned. ÖGK’s employer pages, at gesundheitskasse.at, publish the current scale.

Follow one long illness through the scale. A first-year employee falls ill for twelve weeks without a break. Weeks one to six are paid in full by the employer, weeks seven to ten at half pay, and for weeks eleven and twelve the employer pays nothing while ÖGK’s sickness benefit takes over. Had the same person been in their second year of service, the full-pay stretch would have covered eight weeks and the half-pay stretch would have ended at week twelve.

The entitlement is tied to the work year, the year that runs from the employee’s start date, not to the calendar year and not to individual episodes of illness. Several short absences in the same work year draw on the same pool of weeks. Once the work year ends, a fresh pool opens at whatever level the employee’s service has reached by then.

Three consequences are worth spelling out for managers abroad:

• a first-year employee who is off for two weeks in spring and three weeks in autumn has used five of their six full-pay weeks, and the next absence that year starts the half-pay weeks after one more week;
• an employee passing their first anniversary moves to the eight-week band in their second work year, with a new pool;
• the start date drives everything, so the HR record must hold the correct one.

Keep a simple running log for each employee: start date, current band, weeks of full and half pay used in the current work year. Payroll needs those numbers to pay the right amount, and the employee will reasonably ask how much entitlement remains during a long illness.

The higher bands matter less for a young team than for one with long tenure. Moving from eight to ten weeks requires more than fifteen years of service, and twelve weeks requires more than twenty-five. A start-up hiring its first Austrian staff will spend years in the first two bands, so plan around six and eight weeks.

Accidents at work are handled separately from ordinary illness. An employee unable to work because of a work accident has a distinct entitlement of eight to ten weeks of continued pay, which does not eat into the general sickness pool.

The accident insurance behind this is paid by the employer alone, at 1.10% of pay in 2026, as part of the 20.98% employer social insurance rate. Since the Telework Act came into force on 1 January 2025, accident insurance also covers agreed telework, including work from home or another agreed place, with commutes covered only for so-called narrow telework locations. For a team working partly from home, that cover is one more reason to have a written telework agreement naming the location; our article on home office rules in Austria explains what it must contain.

If an employee has an ordinary illness and a work accident in the same work year, the two entitlements run side by side. Payroll should record the cause of each absence so that the right pool is drawn down, and so that the accident weeks do not reduce what remains for a later illness.

Once the employer’s full-pay and half-pay weeks are exhausted, the employee’s income during illness comes from ÖGK as Krankengeld. The employer stops paying salary for the sickness at that point, although the employment itself continues. For a long illness, that hand-over date is worth calculating early and telling the employee about in writing, so they know when their income source changes and can contact ÖGK in good time.

That benefit is funded through health insurance contributions taken from every payroll. In 2026 the employer pays 3.78% of regular pay into health insurance and the employee 3.87%, for a combined 7.65%, collected by ÖGK along with the other branches. The employer’s sickness costs are therefore twofold: the continued-pay weeks, which it carries directly, and its share of the contributions that fund the benefit afterwards.

Continued pay is ordinary salary for payroll purposes. It is calculated, taxed and reported in the usual monthly run, with social insurance and wage tax deducted as normal, and it appears in the contribution return sent through ELDA. Contributions keep running on continued pay, including the 1.53% severance contribution, which applies to all pay without a ceiling. Our guide to the Austrian payroll process covers that monthly cycle.

Several other absences sit close to sickness, and employers often mix them up. They divide neatly into those the employer pays for and those it does not.

Care leave (Pflegefreistellung) is paid by the employer. An employee may take up to one week per work year to care for a sick close relative or member of the household, with one further week available when a child below the age of twelve falls ill again in that year.

Maternity protection (Mutterschutz) costs the employer nothing in salary. An employment ban applies from eight weeks before the expected birth until eight weeks after it; where the birth is premature, a caesarean or of more than one child, the period after it lasts twelve weeks. During that time the employee receives Wochengeld (maternity benefit) from ÖGK, calculated from her recent net earnings.

The fathers’ month (Papamonat) gives fathers a statutory right to one month off after a birth. The employer does not pay for it; the state pays a family time bonus of €54.87 per day. Parental leave (Karenz) is likewise unpaid by the employer and can run until the child’s second birthday, with the state childcare allowance available to parents. If one parent takes it all, it lasts at most 22 months, and it can be split between the parents twice, with each part lasting at least two months. Both carry protection from dismissal until four weeks after they end, which our article on dismissal rules in Austria covers in context.

For budgeting, the useful figure is the maximum employer-paid sickness in a work year at each employee’s current band. For most new hires that means six full-pay weeks plus four on half pay. On the €60,000 Vienna reference salary (14 × €4,285.71), the employer’s total annual cost is about €77,805 before any absence, and continued pay during sickness sits inside that salary figure rather than on top of it. What it does add is the cost of covering the work while the person is away. For a small team, that cover cost is usually the larger risk: a temporary contractor, overtime for colleagues at a 50% premium, or a delayed project can each outweigh the salary paid during the absence itself.

Make sure managers know four things: that an Austrian employee’s sick pay is not discretionary, that the scale depends on the work year, that work accidents have their own entitlement, and that care leave for a sick child is paid. Trouble tends to start when a manager abroad treats a long illness as a performance matter, or assumes that time off is unpaid unless someone approves it.

Through Employer of Record Austria, continued pay, the hand-over to ÖGK and the related payroll entries are handled as part of the monthly run, and we track each employee’s band and remaining weeks. You decide how the work is covered while someone is away. For the wider employer picture, read what an EOR does in Austria, and for planning a first role, our first employee in Austria checklist.