August 15, 2019 | Personal Injury, Workers Compensation
Unfortunately, work-related injuries and deaths occur in just about every industry.
No matter how easy the work or how safe the environment, it is nearly impossible to completely avoid accidents or negligence.
Workers’ compensation claims are filed every day, but some industries are more likely to have employees injured or killed on the job.
In theses, industries companies and employers know the risk is higher, so they want to do everything they can to make sure they are covered if someone is to go wrong and an employee is left temporarily or permanently injured.
There are a handful of industries that probably come to mind when thinking about a possibly dangerous occupation. Construction workers, police officer, the military, and many other present obvious risks.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a total of 5,147 employees died in 2017 due to injuries sustained while working and 882,730 employees were injured or became ill due to their occupation.
The BLS states that 2,077 deaths were caused by transportation/traffic incidents, 887 were caused by falls or slips, 807 due to homicide or animal-related injuries, and the remaining coming from things like trauma from equipment, exposure to harmful substances, and fires/explosions.
The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates its fatality rate based on the number of deaths in an industry per 100,000 full-time employees.
Overall, the construction industry has the most fatalities each year but because it also has a very high number of employees, there are only around 10 deaths per 100,000 employees.
Using this method, they have concluded that the following industries are the most dangerous:
10 industries with the highest amount of fatal work injuries per 100,000 employees in the United States:
In 2017, 41 people working in fishing, hunting, and related industries died due to workplace injuries. This calculates to 99.8 deaths per 100,000 employees in the United States; the highest of all in the United States.
Logging is dangerous for obvious reasons. Employees are working with huge machinery, cutting down even bigger trees, and more often than not, the only way transport to a hospital is by helicopter. 84.3 deaths per 100,000 logging workers were caused in 2017.
It comes as no surprise that aircraft pilots injuries are almost always fatal. In 2017, there were 59 deaths caused by workplace injuries in the pilot industry.
Industries with the most overall deaths in the United States
Again, the previous list was calculated based on the number of deaths per 100,000 employees. Industries listed below may not appear on that list because they have a high amount of employees, so the workplace-death-per-employee ratio is not as high.
As you can see, construction workers had the highest amount of workplace deaths.
Workers’ compensation claims can still be filed if a loved one died as a result of injuries suffered on the job. No matter how obvious or minor the negligence was, you still deserve to be compensated for your loss.
Please contact the workers’ compensation attorneys at Ortwerth Law to get any questions answered.
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