What is short-term disability insurance?

Short-term disability insurance briefly provides income if you can’t work due to illness, an accident or hospitalization. 

Short-term disability (STD) insurance is a term you may have encountered while filling out employee paperwork when you start a job. But what exactly does it do? It provides income for someone over a short period of time if they can’t work because they’re ill or injured, have been in an accident, or are in the hospital. Click HERE to learn more. 

Illness or disability

Nobody likes the thought of getting sick, but according to StatCan, the average worker in Ontario lost 6.3 days of work in 2015 due to an illness or disability.    Multiplying that by the size of the labour force (est. 7.5 million), that comes out to just under 50million days lost.   So if you rarely take a sick day, you should probably count yourself lucky.    As for lasting illnesses or disability, there is approximately a 25% chance probability that you will suffer a disabilty at some point in your career.  Of course lifestyle and individual factors will influence your own odds of this happening. If you want to estimate your own chances, visit this link, Personal Disability Quotient (PDQ)

To learn a bit more about your options to protect your income and lifestyle in the event of a disability or critical illness, click on the related links.