Canadian women diagnosed with early breast cancer see their income plummet by an average of 27 per cent in the first year of diagnosis, a news study finds.

That's because the women need to take an average of 32 weeks off of work for treatment and recovery.

It's just one more way that a cancer diagnosis rips apart a woman's world, along with the expected emotional and health toll. But it's one that has not been studied well until now.

Women who have learned they have breast cancer typically undergo surgery followed by radiation therapy and perhaps chemotherapy. They then need to recover at home and follow a regimen of medications.

These women are eligible for Employment Insurance benefits equivalent to 55 per cent of their wages for up to 15 weeks, but for many that is not nearly enough.

Unionized workers often have their income topped up with sick leave payments, as do other employees at certain corporations or government agencies. But plenty of other women receive no compensation at all. Self-employed women who manage their own businesses are not eligible for EI, nor are students and stay-at-home moms. And part-time workers who have not accumulated 600 insured hours in the last year don't qualify either.

In a study published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Elizabeth Maunsell, of the department of social and preventive medicine at Laval University in Quebec City, led a team who interviewed 829 women in Quebec who had recently been diagnosed with early stage breast cancer.

The researchers interviewed the women at one, six, and 12 months after treatment began, and asked them about their working status prior to diagnosis, the amount of time they had to take off work, and the different types of compensation they received during their absence.

Of the 800 women who completed all three interviews, 459 had paying jobs at the time of diagnosis. Among the 403 women who had an absence or reduced hours of work, the researchers found that, on average, they lost 27 per cent of the wages they would have earned in the 12 months following their diagnosis had they not been ill -- even after all other forms of compensation had been taken into account.

Ten per cent of the women lost more than two-thirds of their income.

The women who were more likely to suffer large wage losses were:

  • less educated
  • lived farther from the hospital where they underwent treatment
  • had more serious disease
  • had less social support
  • were self-employed or worked part-time
  • were recently hired at their current job.

Those who required chemotherapy were also more likely to lose more income than the average.

The researchers also found that 7.5 per cent of women took no time off from work following diagnosis, but another 22 per cent had still not returned to work after one year.

The authors conclude that wage losses from breast cancer should be seen as "an important adverse consequence of this disease."