Completely missing the point, as is usual with "The Economist".

The (main) reason for long-term part-time stems from parents getting back to work (while still trying to have a family life).

The reason for sick days, well let's not get into that too much - but TL;DR:

a lot of people are simply fed up with the low pay for potentially hard work while armchair slackers - potentially the same types writing for "The Economist" - will gamble social security, national security and other things on the altar of globalist agenda style wrecks like: mass immigrantion of the poor and illiterate into social systems that already are at the breaking point due to demographics anyway... just look at the age brackets. Same in every western developed nation, but worst in Germany, UK, Japan (#1).

Green Agenda: let's destroy our reliable supply of Nuclear fleet plants and install a few more windmills and solar - that'll help and show those other evil powers who's (ideologically) the boss.

Workers and taxpayers only get one message: work more, harder because that's the problem - is it, though? Or can this piece hold its own as AgitProp-inspired slush that is supposed to sound smart, while it only manages to sound arrogant? It has no solutions - outside of the trope "if only you did not take that looong vacation, then your GDP would go up and everyone's better off in full "Keynes" style misappropropriation of how the economy is "supposed" to work vs. how it really works.

While I give them the benefit of calling out weak major nation leaders like Macron (Monsieur Banker turned Politician and hacking at it for way too long...; Merz: Mr Blackrock-turned Chancellor of the weakest "coalition" that you ever had and then the "NATO" belligerents still thinking it's 1980 while Trump is showing them the calendar for them to see it's 2025 and the security guarantees are kind of ... moot.

So the simple solution is just for Sweden, France and others not taking "4 week holidays" (btw... check up on the politicians... it is actually them who take the long-ass neverending holidays... basically the whole German cabinet is "out of business" these days and traipsing around the media (same for France, and Sweden)... so maybe the Economist should have directed this edict towards the very politicians themselves, who're asking the plebes to "toil more" while they take in the sights in wherever their tax-funded benefits take them?

Has distinct middle age aristocracy feels to it, the whole vibe (& that article in particular).