7% of Cancer Survivors Lose Jobs, Poll Finds

Workers who suffer from cancer are fired or laid off from their jobs five times more often than other workers, according to a survey released Tuesday.

One in 14 cancer survivors--about 7%--said they lost their jobs as a result of their illness, according to the nationwide survey of 500 cancer patients, 100 supervisors and 100 co-workers.

By comparison, government labor statistics show that about one in 80 workers, or 1.3%, lost their jobs last year, the study found.

Of the cancer patients in the survey, 40% said they missed fewer than five days of work in an average month during cancer treatment. Sixty-six percent said they told their employers within a week of their diagnosis, whereas 14% said they never revealed their diagnosis in the workplace.

The study found that patients and supervisors surveyed had widely different views of how cancer’s side effects affected patients’ job performance.

Among supervisors, 85% cited patients’ fatigue, compared with 58% of the patients. Nearly three-quarters of the supervisors said they thought the employees with cancer had nausea, but just 33% of the employees said they did.

The random telephone poll, conducted May 13-29, had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.