"Months of medical leave can leave a gap in your work life and affect your retirement"

The working life report is a document in which the Social Security Treasury compiles the contribution history of a worker in Spain, that is, the days they have been registered and also the situations of sick leave in the different Social Security regimes - general regime, self-employed workers, sea workers or coal mining workers. Alfonso Muñoz, a Social Security official, recently spoke about this on his YouTube channel, warning about a detail to take into account regarding the retirement contribution time if you have had medical leave or benefits for the birth of a child.

"Imagine that you ask for a work life report and you look at it slowly. You observe the periods in which you were on medical leave or receiving the benefit for birth and childcare, which is maternity and paternity, and you suddenly discover that those periods do not appear in your work life. Why is that?" says Muñoz.

As he explains, "many people think that when you are collecting a temporary disability, medical leave or a benefit for the birth of a child, your time as a contributor continues to add up and they are completely wrong."

To do this, he distinguishes between two concepts that workers normally "tend to mix": collecting the benefit and the contribution. On the one hand, it indicates, "during the temporary disability benefit or the benefit for the birth of a child, you collect your benefit punctually every month, whether through the mutual insurance company, the INSS or the company."

However, he continues, "the fact that you receive the financial benefit does not automatically mean that you continue generating contributions as if you were working at 100%. That is not the case," he clarifies.

For Social Security, "the key is registering with the company," says the official. "The contribution is only maintained while you are registered with the company. The moment your employment relationship is terminated or your contract ends, the obligation to contribute ceases suddenly," he warns.

For this reason, "many citizens shake their heads when they see that those months in which they were on medical leave do not appear as quoted in their work life report."

As he details, this leads to finding "a gap" in work life. "This period of assimilation or collection without effective registrations simply does not appear reflected or added as a quote for the calculation of future rights or to reach grace periods that Social Security requires from time to time."