The Ortho-McNeil’s Survey of pain in the workplace shows an increase of 38% of workers reporting chronic pain from when the study was initially done in 1996.

The majority of employers cited pain-related conditions as a lost of productivity in the workplace. There is a reported increase of 65% for work-site wellness programs, but only 22% of the programs include a component about preventing or living with chronic pain conditions.

The original survey did not ask how bad their pain had to be to keep them from going to work, however the most recent survey (2006) reports that 95% of those replying said that their pain must be moderately to very severe to cause them to stay home from work.