U.S. employers are paying an increasingly steep price in lost productivity for workers who take time off from their jobs to care for elderly family members.

Working caregivers cost businesses as much as $34 billion a year, or an average $2,110 each for the estimated 15.9 million caregivers working full time, according to research to be released today by the nonprofit National Alliance for Caregiving and MetLife Inc. Employers' annual cost is about 16% higher, or $4 billion more a year, when compared with the results of a similar study in 1997.

For employees juggling work and caregiving, "it's important for an employer to realize that there's the potential for disruption and absenteeism," says Sandra Timmermann, director of the MetLife Mature Market Institute in Westport, Conn., "and it's likely that the situation is going to get worse" as the parents of working baby boomers enter their 80s in larger numbers.

The study found that productivity costs climbed even higher -- by 49% -- for the estimated seven million working caregivers who provide 12 to 87 hours of intense care each week for an adult over the age of 50.  

The researchers defined that level of care as including at least two basic tasks often referred to as "activities of daily living": bathing, dressing, eating, getting out of bed and using the toilet. Such caregivers also were helping with at least four "instrumental activities of daily living" -- such as financial management, transportation, help with medications, shopping or preparing meals. The total cost included that of caregivers providing help only with instrumental living activities for up to 10 hours a week. (The figures weren't adjusted for inflation.)

"Elder adults at home are sicker and have more medical needs than in the past" and require more-intense caregiving, says Gail Hunt, president and chief executive of the National Alliance for Caregiving in Bethesda, Md.

To calculate employer costs, the researchers used a 2004 survey of 1,247 caregivers, with a 2.8-percentage-point margin of error, by the alliance and AARP in Washington, D.C.

Replacing the estimated 9% of caregivers who wind up quitting their jobs is the most expensive caregiving-related problem for employers, costing an estimated $6.6 billion a year, the study found. Workday interruptions, estimated to cost $6.3 billion a year, were based on an hour a week for 50 weeks a year, which is "pretty conservative," says MetLife's Ms. Timmermann. 

Some large employers, such as Ford Motor Co., provide workers with aid from geriatric-care managers or employee-assistance programs that help them pinpoint social services that can relieve some caregiving tasks. Most employers -- particularly the small and midsize businesses that often are hardest hit when a worker has to take time off or quit -- don't, Ms. Hunt says.

To help businesses estimate their own lost-productivity costs, MetLife and the alliance created an online calculator (eldercarecalculator.org¹). The site links to the report, which lists low-cost resources to help employers give caregivers the flexibility they need to stay on the job.

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