Sick leave as a student

This guide covers you as a student when you fall ill. What matters isn't the studies themselves, but whether you have an SGI from work to base sickness benefit on. Studying produces no SGI of its own.

If you worked before your studies, that SGI can be protected while you study. With no prior work, though, there's no sickness benefit at all. Unlike parental benefit (föräldrapenning), there's no floor (grundnivå) to fall back on.

Sickness benefit is built on your SGI

Sickness benefit is 77.6% of your SGI, and the SGI is built on work income, not on student aid or student loans. So studying in itself creates no SGI. To get sickness benefit as a student you need an SGI from a job, either one you hold alongside your studies or one you had before that's still protected.

CSN-approved studies protect a prior SGI

CSN-approved studies at half-time or more count as SGI-protective time. If you had an SGI from a job before your studies, it stays in place and is used to calculate sickness benefit, just as if you were still working. The most common path is to draw student aid from CSN, which qualifies on its own. Without student aid, SGI can still be protected if the studies are at post-secondary level or within your own professional field. Quarter-time studies don't qualify.

With no prior work it's zero

If you've never worked, or it was too long ago, there's no SGI to calculate from. Then no sickness benefit is paid. This is the big difference from parental benefit: there, a grundnivå floor applies to everyone, but sickness benefit has no such bottom. Your prior income needs to produce an SGI of at least 14,200 SEK per year for any sickness benefit to be paid at all.