Introduction: Absenteeism has been understood as non-attendance at work for a period of one or more working days, which is considered as a health problem with a growing interest in its impact on the quality of life, mental health of the worker, economy and organizational competitiveness. Objective: To identify factors attributed to absenteeism in Latin American countries in the last 20 years. Materials and methods: The systematic review methodology was used following the stages of: construction of the problem question and objective; specification of inclusion criteria; formulation of the search plan; item browsing; quality assessment; systematization of information; interpretation and presentation of results. Results: The factors attributable to absenteeism can be grouped into three groups: individual factors related to the conditions of the worker, demographic factors and finally the intralabor ones, which are related to the labor context. Conclusion: The presence of labor absenteeism is due to the confluence of individual, demographic, intralabor and extralabor factors, which relate to each other. According to literature, the presence of this phenomenon is due to a multifactorial etiology with negative effects at the individual and organizational level.
