Karensavdrag (waiting-period deduction)
The karensavdrag is the deductible you carry when you fall ill. It is an amount taken from your sjuklön (sick pay) equal to 20% of the sick pay you would receive over an average working week. It is a fixed amount, not a day.
Not a waiting day, a deduction
Until 2019 the deductible worked as a karensdag (waiting day): the first day of illness was simply unpaid. That hit people unequally. Someone who fell ill before a long shift lost many hours of pay, while someone with a short shift barely noticed. So on 1 January 2019 the waiting day was replaced by the karensavdrag: a fixed deduction of 20% of a week's sick pay, the same size no matter which day or shift you happen to fall ill on.
How it is worked out
For the first 14 days your employer pays sjuklön, 80% of the pay you lose. The karensavdrag is 20% of a full week's sick pay and is taken from that first payment. Because it is calculated on a week rather than a single day, the deductible is the same whether you are off for one day or several. In practice it lands at roughly one day's pay for someone working evenly across five days.
Worked example
Monthly salary 30,000 kr is 360,000 kr a year, or about 6,923 kr a week. Sick pay is 80% of that, 5,538 kr for the week. The karensavdrag is 20% of the weekly sick pay: 0.20 × 5,538 ≈ 1,108 kr, deducted once from your first sick payment. Fall ill again within five days and no new deduction is taken.
Falling ill again within five days
If you recover and fall ill again within five calendar days it counts as the same sick period. No new karensavdrag is taken, so you pay the deductible only once. If the full deduction was not made the first time, for example because you fell ill late in the day, the remainder is taken in the continued period. There is also a general high-risk protection (allmänt högriskskydd) that caps the deductions at ten within a rolling twelve-month window.
Self-employed and other exceptions
If you run a sole proprietorship (enskild firma) there is no sick pay and therefore no karensavdrag. Instead you have a waiting time (karenstid) with Försäkringskassan: 7 days unless you choose otherwise, or 1, 14, 30, 60 or 90 days if you do. It sets how long you go without benefit before sjukpenning starts. A longer waiting time gives a lower egenavgift. People on call and hourly staff get the karensavdrag on the sick pay they would have earned on booked hours. Anyone with a chronic illness can apply for special high-risk protection (särskilt högriskskydd), which lets Försäkringskassan take over the deductible.
Calculate further
- Sjukpenning calculator: your exact sick pay and daily rate
- Net salary calculator: what a day of pay is worth after tax
- Guide: if you get sick, the whole money timeline
- First-job guide: how the safety net fits together