The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is predicting a record number of Lyme disease cases — more than 500,000 — in 2026. The small arachnids had a strong start wreaking havoc this spring as the CDC’s tick bite tracker showed an approximate 53 percent increase in emergency room visits in April.
“A lot of times people will get symptoms, but they won’t realize they've had a bite because they don’t see the tick. The tick feeds and drops off once it's done,” says College of Health and Behavioral Sciences Associate Dean Joseph Trunzo, Ph.D., a practicing clinical psychologist who has helped individuals manage the psychological effects of chronic Lyme disease and is the author of Living Beyond Lyme.
Approximately 476,000 people in the United States are treated each year for Lyme disease, according to CDC data, and this number is likely to rise as tick populations increase. While Lyme is the most common tick-borne illness in the U.S., ticks can also spread other serious diseases, including Rocky Mountain spotted fever, babesiosis, and alpha-gal syndrome.
“It’s when the infection goes undetected for extended periods of time that it can become a longer and more protracted disease process,” Trunzo says; approximately 20 percent of Lyme patients experience persistent symptoms after antibiotics, according to the CDC.
In addition to being a public health problem, Economics Lecturer Liam Rice notes that the disease is also a labor economics issue.
“The costs accumulate in ways that standard benefits accounting doesn't always capture,” says Rice. “Lyme disease is not typically on the list of conditions employers think about when modeling workforce risk, but it should be.”
Analyzing the economic toll
The economic costs of Lyme disease fall disproportionately on working-age adults and the organizations that employ them, notes Rice.
He shares that employees with Lyme disease miss more work and run the risk of developing post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome. A Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study found that Lyme disease patients cost the healthcare system nearly $3,000 more than comparable patients without the diagnosis in the year following treatment, and those who developed longer term symptoms carried $3,798 more in costs. Additionally, the study found that Lyme disease patients had 87 percent more outpatient visits in the year following diagnosis.
While the disease’s direct costs are more apparent, Rice explains that the indirect costs are larger.
For instance, presenteeism — the productivity loss that occurs when employees are at work but functionally impaired — consistently outpaces absenteeism as a driver of total economic burden in chronic disease research.
From a human capital perspective, Lyme disease creates a depreciation problem,” Rice says. “Workers acquire skills, relationships, and institutional knowledge over time, and that accumulated capital generates returns for employers. A prolonged illness interrupts that accumulation, and in severe cases drives workers out of the labor force entirely.”
This then has ripple effects throughout the economy: people who lose their jobs will spend less money, which reduces incomes in other industries who then also spend less money, and the ripple continues. Additionally, increased medical spending due to Lyme disease has a substitution effect for people, causing them to spend less on other personal items like entertainment and investment even if their incomes remain constant.
Implementing Lyme-friendly policies
To support those impacted by Lyme disease, Rice shares that there are several approaches employers could take.
For starters, flexible scheduling and remote work access can help reduce presenteeism losses during symptomatic periods without requiring extended leave. Having clear return-to-work protocols that allow phased reentry, rather than requiring full recovery before reinstatement, to help reduce the duration and severity of productivity loss is also beneficial.
Rice notes that Lyme disease is a useful focus for organizations because the prevention-to-disability cost differential is large, and the preventive interventions are inexpensive.
“Employers who design benefits and workplace policies with that logic in mind will carry lower total cost burdens regardless of which condition they are managing,” says Rice.
From a company standpoint, organizations should consider benefit designs that minimize prior authorization barriers for Lyme-related specialist referrals to help lower the probability of delayed diagnosis progressing to chronic disease. Additionally, providing occupational health education, particularly around tick awareness in high-exposure roles, is low-cost prevention with meaningful expected value.
“The employers who handle chronic illness well tend to do one thing consistently: they treat accommodation as a retention strategy, rather than a cost center,” says Rice.