Using data from the 2001 National Drug Strategy Household Survey, which asked respondents how many days of work they skipped due to alcohol consumption, the authors estimated at least 2.7million work days are lost each year due to alcohol use at a cost to the economy of $437 million (in 2006 dollars). Using a slightly different methodology, the authors found the figures could be as high as $1.2 billion and 7.4 million days lost.

Drinkers who drank infrequently, but heavily when they did (binge drinkers), were the most likely to call in sick. Six per cent of people surveyed said they had attended work at least once under the influence of alcohol in the previous year, while 9 per cent reported drinking at work.

Other studies have put the total economic cost of alcohol consumption at $5.6 billion a year, including lost economic production via sickies, the loss of production from workplace accidents and the lower productivity displayed by workers with hangovers.

Which all just goes to prove there will always be an economist or academic willing to supply a deliciously round number to satisfy our desire for certainty and big numbers.

Concern about the impact of chucking a sickie on the nation's productivity plays into the most common misconception about the term. Productivity is not about how much you produce, but how much you produce relative to what you put in.

According to figures from Saul Eslake, now chief economist at Merrill Lynch Australia, it is true that the growth of labour productivity - value added per hour worked - has slowed. Growth was at an average annual rate of just 0.6 per cent in the second half of the last decade, compared to 1.9 per cent in the first half, and 2.5 per cent in the last half of the '90s.

But what economists call ''multi-factor productivity'' which takes into account what employers bring to the table in terms of capital, has performed even worse. It has actually declined, on average, in the second half of the last decade, compared to an average annual growth rate of 0.9 per cent in the first half of the decade and 1.7 per cent in the second half of the 1990s.

As Eslake observes, the country's flagging productivity performance is ''the Australian economy's biggest Achilles heel''.

But because productivity is defined as output per hour worked, workers chucking sickies and not working at all, does not affect the nation's productivity.

Indeed, turning up to work and producing at below your usual capacity is the real productivity concern.

The economic modellers Econtech, supplying yet another satisfyingly large and round number, have estimated the total hit to the economy from such ''presenteeism'' at $26 billion.

So do your throbbing temples and the nation's flagging productivity performance a favour: stay at home.

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