Workplace Issues - The Workplace Is Safer And Safer

This graph presents data on all nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses. As in the case of fatal on-the-job injuries, here too we see a declining rate of injury. The number of on-thejob injuries is down. This is true both for injuries causing no more than a partial day of lost work time (the day on which the injury occurred) and for injuries or illnesses that result in lost work time.

The trend is clear, but the decline is greater for less serious injuries. Non-work-loss injuries — those that involve no more time loss than a partial day's work on the day the injury is suffered — are down over the period by 59%. Lost work time injuries are down by 12%.

Several factors together are believed to explain this decline. In 1992, expenditures on workers' compensation claims reached $45.7 billion, more than twice the $22.3 billion spent in 1985. This notable rise in expenditures spurred cost control efforts and made it more cost effective to spend larger sums on safety and health programs.³

Another factor believed to have influenced the injury and illness rate is a series of changes made in Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) policies and enforcement procedures. In the mid-1990s, OSHA refocused its resources. The agency spent less time inspecting establishments and more time providing compliance assistance.

Some suspect that inaccurate reporting of minor injuries is on the rise and that this accounts for some of the reduced rate of non-work-loss injuries. But such claims are difficult to verify.

Another possible factor sometimes cited as an explanation for declining injury rates is the transition from an industrial to a services economy; the former has a much higher injury rate than the latter. But studies of this factor have shown that the shift did not contribute particularly to the decline.⁴

What is clear is that both fatal workplace injuries and all other occupational injuries and illnesses are down — good news and particularly encouraging because the change occurred during a time of growth. Periods of expansion are particularly susceptible to rises in workplace injury rates: the pace of work tends to speed up as orders pile up and demand is great; the hiring of new employees to meet greater demand means there are more inexperienced workers on the job. Thus the period presented in the graph provides a very positive view of the efforts being made to improve safety in the workplace.

Although the injuries and illnesses presented here did not result in death, they do represent a wide range of severity. They cover everything from minor cuts and bruises to dismemberment and seriously disabling sorts of injuries. The next panel will take a look at the distribution of occupational injuries by type.

Source: Data presented in the graph are from: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Incidence rate of occupational injuries and illness for private industry by selected case types, 1973-2000," available online at: http://www/bls.gov/news.release/osha.t06.htm. Information about the likely reasons for a declining rate of injury are from: Hugh Conway and Jens Svenson , Occupational Injury and Illness Rates, 1992-96: Why They Fell, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Monthly Labor Review, November 1998.