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Employees in Austria keep their normal pay from the employer for the first 6 to 12 weeks of illness, depending on length of service, and then get 4 weeks at half pay. The ÖGK (the Austrian health insurance fund) pays Krankengeld (sickness benefit) at of the pay base from the fourth day of illness and from the 43rd day, but it stays switched off while the employer owes more than half pay and runs at half strength during half pay. This covers employees insured through an Austrian job; the rules are federal and the same in every state, and marginal jobs and the self-employed follow different paths.
Sick pay in Austria comes in two layers, and the employer’s layer comes first. Anyone used to a health fund that pays from the first days of illness meets a different order here: Krankengeld from the ÖGK only starts to matter once the employer’s full pay is out of the way, and it replaces only part of the pay.
It’s one of the cash benefits of Austria’s social insurance system, paid by the same fund that covers treatment (see the article on ÖGK health insurance). This article follows an employee through a long illness: what the employer pays, what the ÖGK adds, how the two fit together, and how both are taxed.
Continued pay from the employer
The first layer is the employer’s duty to keep paying an employee who can’t work because of illness or an accident, provided the employee didn’t cause it on purpose or through gross negligence. The business service portal’s page on sick leave (in German) describes it as full pay for a period that grows with length of service, followed by 4 weeks at half pay.
The periods themselves come from the Continued Pay Act (Entgeltfortzahlungsgesetz) (in German). For working years that began on or after 1 July 2018, salaried staff (Angestellte) and blue-collar workers (Arbeiter) have the same periods.
| Uninterrupted service | Full pay | Then half pay |
|---|---|---|
| Under 1 year | 6 weeks | 4 weeks |
| 1 year to under 15 years | 8 weeks | 4 weeks |
| 15 years to under 25 years | 10 weeks | 4 weeks |
| 25 years or more | 12 weeks | 4 weeks |
The allowance belongs to the working year, which starts on the employee’s start date unless a collective agreement or works agreement moves it to the calendar year. Several illnesses in one year draw on the same allowance, so a second illness gets only what the first left over.
An illness that runs across the start of a new working year starts a fresh allowance, according to the ÖGK’s employer page on continued pay and the new working year (in German). Whatever was unused in the old year lapses.
Service with the same employer adds up across breaks of up to 60 days, unless the earlier stint ended because the employee resigned, left without good cause or was dismissed for fault. Stays for a cure or rehabilitation that a social insurance carrier approves or orders count like illness.
An accident at work or an occupational disease (Berufskrankheit) has its own allowance: 8 weeks at full pay for each event, whatever other sick days came before, rising to 10 weeks after 15 years of uninterrupted service. The rest of this article follows ordinary illness.
For a hypothetical employee in the first year of a job, continued pay covers 10 weeks in all (6 full, 4 half). At 25 years of service it covers 16.
Krankengeld from the ÖGK: start, rate and duration
According to the ÖGK’s page on Krankengeld (in German), Krankengeld is paid from the fourth day of illness at the earliest. For days 4 to 42 it’s of the pay base (Bemessungsgrundlage), and from day 43 it rises to .
The base is the pay that social insurance contributions were worked out on in the period before full pay ended, spread over calendar days. The Illustration below simplifies this by dividing a monthly amount by 30; the ÖGK works from the actual contribution period. Because the base is the pay that contributions were charged on, and contributions stop at the ceiling of EUR 6,930 a month, pay above the ceiling doesn’t raise Krankengeld.
The 13th and 14th salary (see the article on special payments) enter the picture only if the employer stops paying them in full during sick leave. The ÖGK then adds a loading of of the base.
Contested flag
Official descriptions of that loading differ. The ÖGK’s March 2026 announcement of its cost measures (in German) says it was lowered from 17% to one sixth (16.66%), and its Krankengeld page now says one sixth, while the Arbeiterkammer’s page on sick pay (the chamber of labour’s advice for employees) still shows 17%. This article uses the ÖGK figure; the ÖGK’s customer service can say which loading a given calculation uses.
The same announcement says the family supplement (Familienzuschlag) to Krankengeld was dropped for new cases. The ÖGK’s page now describes it only for sick leave that began before 1 March 2026.
Duration has three tiers. The basic limit is 26 weeks for the same illness. It extends to 52 weeks for someone insured in health insurance for at least 6 months in the 12 months before the illness began, and the ÖGK’s own statutes (Satzung) can stretch it to as much as 78 weeks under criteria set there.
When the maximum runs out, health insurance usually ends too, and the ÖGK suggests getting in touch while Krankengeld is still being paid.
The ÖGK pays every 4 weeks in arrears and needs no application once it has the details. The employer sends it a confirmation of work and pay (Arbeits- und Entgeltbestätigung) and answers for wrong details, according to the business service portal’s sick leave page. Co-insured family members and pension recipients have no claim.
How the two layers combine
The link between the layers is the suspension rule (Ruhen, to rest). Krankengeld rests while the employee is entitled to more than half of full pay from the employer. Where the entitlement is exactly half, it rests by half, and once the employer’s entitlement is over it’s paid in full.
The test is the entitlement to pay. During full pay Krankengeld rests completely, during the half-pay weeks the ÖGK pays half of its rate, and after that it pays all of it.
For an employee with an employer, then, the rate for days 4 to 42 pays out in practice only where continued pay isn’t due: the year’s allowance is already used up, or there’s no employer (the section on job endings returns to that). A hypothetical eight-week illness shows how the pieces line up.
Illustration
A hypothetical employee, working for an Austrian employer and insured through the job, is ill for 8 weeks under the rules in force in .
Assumptions: gross pay of EUR 3,900 a month in 14 payments a year; the employee started 7 months earlier, so the allowance is 6 weeks at full pay and then 4 at half pay; it’s the first illness in the working year; the illness starts on a Monday and lasts 56 calendar days.
The employer keeps paying the 13th and 14th salary in full, so no special-payment loading applies, and pay was the same in the month before full pay ended. All amounts are gross, before contributions and tax. A week’s pay is taken as EUR 900 (EUR 3,900 × 12 ÷ 52), and the daily base is EUR 130 (EUR 3,900 ÷ 30), well under the monthly ceiling of EUR 6,930.
| Period | From the employer | From the ÖGK |
|---|---|---|
| Days 1 to 42 (weeks 1 to 6) | 6 × EUR 900 = EUR 5,400 | Nothing: Krankengeld rests during full pay |
| Days 43 to 56 (weeks 7 and 8) | 2 × EUR 450 = EUR 900 | 14 days × EUR 39 = EUR 546 |
| Total | EUR 6,300 | EUR 546 |
The EUR 39 a day is EUR 130 × = EUR 78, halved because the employer still owes half pay. Altogether the employee receives EUR 6,846, against EUR 7,200 for 8 weeks of full pay, which is EUR 354 (about 5%) less.
If the illness ran past week 10, employer pay would stop and Krankengeld alone would be EUR 78 a day, EUR 546 a week. The ÖGK’s own calculation can differ in day counts and rounding.
Reporting sick leave
An employee who can’t work has to tell the employer immediately, without culpable delay, according to the business service portal. The employer may ask for a doctor’s confirmation, which collective agreements often allow only from the fourth day.
The ÖGK side runs through the doctor: a contracted doctor reports the incapacity electronically through the e-card system (see the article on the e-card). Krankengeld rests until the ÖGK has the report, although a report that arrives within a week of the start closes that gap.
The end of the sick leave works the same way in reverse: the doctor normally reports the employee fit again, and employees can also report themselves recovered through the ÖGK’s online portal.
Tax on sick pay
Continued pay is the employee’s normal pay, still paid by the employer, so wage tax and contributions come off it through payroll as usual. Krankengeld is taxable employment income too, but the withholding works differently.
The ÖGK page says the ÖGK withholds wage tax only on the part of the daily amount above , at on the excess. That’s provisional: the page warns that the employee assessment can bring a back payment. By law the ÖGK also reports the year’s Krankengeld to the tax office on an annual wage statement (Lohnzettel) by 31 January of the following year, and the withheld amount shows on the payment confirmation.
Illustration
A hypothetical employee, taxable in Austria on the pay, receives the Krankengeld from the eight-week illness above under the rules in force in .
Assumptions: the same pay, dates and payments as in the first Illustration; the threshold is applied per calendar day; the ÖGK pays EUR 39 a day for 14 days; no other income is involved.
The ÖGK withholds on the part of each day’s payment above , which is EUR 39 minus EUR 30 = EUR 9. At that is EUR 1.80 a day, or EUR 25.20 over 14 days.
The employer’s half pay of EUR 900 went through payroll as usual. The EUR 546 of Krankengeld and the EUR 6,300 of pay come from two payers, so the real tax is settled in the assessment, and the amount withheld is only an advance.
That two-payer set-up is the reason the tax office can require an assessment when Krankengeld arrives alongside pay: each payer taxes its own payment on its own, and the total can land in a higher band than either assumed. The article on compulsory assessment covers that ground, and the article on the employee assessment covers the assessment itself.
This describes someone taxable in Austria on the pay. A non-resident or a cross-border commuter can be in a different position, and that’s a question for a tax adviser.
Marginal jobs and the self-employed
A marginal job (earnings no higher than the monthly limit of EUR 551.10; see the article on marginal employment) doesn’t come with full health insurance. The ÖGK’s Krankengeld page gives marginal employees a claim only if they’ve taken out self-insurance for a marginal job, which costs EUR 83.49 a month for health and pension together (see the article on self-insurance).
Krankengeld under that self-insurance is a flat a day, whatever the pay was. Continued pay from the employer sits in employment law rather than in insurance. The continued-pay statute applies to employees on an ordinary employment contract and sets no earnings floor, so the periods in the table above apply to marginal jobs too, worked out on the lower pay (the Arbeiterkammer can confirm a particular case).
Self-employed
Continued pay is an employer’s duty, so it has no equivalent for someone working for themselves, and the ÖGK’s Krankengeld page is written for people insured through employment (including freie Dienstnehmer, contractors insured like employees). The self-employed are insured with the SVS (the social insurance fund for the self-employed), which runs its own rules on money during illness. The article on sick pay and unemployment cover for the self-employed covers them.
When the job ends during sick leave
An employer who dismisses an employee during an illness, dismisses without good cause, is to blame for the employee’s early exit or agrees a termination during or because of the illness still owes continued pay for the statutory period, according to the statute on continued pay. Whether a particular ending falls into one of those cases is a labour-law question.
For Krankengeld, the ÖGK says the entitlement carries on where the job ends during sick leave. The suspension rule still applies while continued pay is owed, so Krankengeld starts to pay at its full rate once the employer’s entitlement runs out.
People who receive unemployment benefit from the AMS (the public employment service) get Krankengeld at the level of their last benefit from the fourth day of illness, according to the ÖGK. Someone who is no longer insured and has no work can still claim if the sick leave begins within 21 days after insurance ended, for up to 26 weeks. The article on health insurance between jobs covers that window and the cover that follows.
International organisation staff
Staff of international organisations in Vienna often have sick-leave pay and insurance set by their organisation’s own rules rather than the general ones described here. The organisation’s HR or legal office can say what applies, and the article on international organisation staff covers the wider picture.
Phased return to work
After a long illness, a phased return (Wiedereingliederungsteilzeit) lets an employee come back part-time while still recovering. The business service portal’s page on it (in German) says there’s no legal right to it: employer and employee agree it in writing.
The conditions on that page include at least 3 months of employment and at least 6 consecutive weeks of incapacity. Working hours drop by at least a quarter and at most half for 1 to 6 months, with one extension of 1 to 3 months.
The employer pays in proportion to the reduced hours, and the health insurance fund pays Wiedereingliederungsgeld, worked out from the sick pay the employee would otherwise get. Krankengeld rests while Wiedereingliederungsgeld is due.
Bottom line
When an employee falls ill, the employer pays first, for 6 to 12 weeks at full pay and then 4 at half, and Krankengeld fills in behind it at of the pay base, rising to from the 43rd day. During a long illness income falls in steps, and because two payers are involved the tax is settled afterwards in the assessment. Marginal jobs, the self-employed and international organisation staff follow different rules.
Getting help
How long continued pay lasts, what a collective agreement adds and any disagreement with the employer are questions for the Arbeiterkammer (the chamber of labour, free for members, with an office in each state). For a dispute that goes further, the AK explains the route to the labour and social court.
Questions about a Krankengeld calculation or payment go to the ÖGK’s customer service. Tax on Krankengeld and the assessment that follows is for a tax adviser (Steuerberater), and the member directory of the Chamber of Tax Advisers and Auditors shows who is authorised; the article on tax and payroll help explains who may do what.
Official sources
- Krankenstand, business service portal (Unternehmensserviceportal), in German
- Krankengeld, ÖGK, in German
- Continued Pay Act (Entgeltfortzahlungsgesetz), legal information system RIS (Federal Chancellery), in German
- ÖGK setzt Maßnahmen für stabile Versorgung und soziale Ausgewogenheit, ÖGK, in German
- Wiedereingliederungsteilzeit, business service portal, in German
