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Recession helps drive down workplace fatalities

Date Posted: September 3 2010

WASHINGTON (PAI) – The recession’s impact, cutting both the employed workforce and the number of hours worked, also pushed on-the-job fatalities down by 17% in 2009. There were 4,340 workers who died on the job in 2009, down from 5,214 the year before, the Labor Department reported.

The rate of deaths on the job also declined to a record low since such data was first kept more than 30 years ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said.  There were 3.3 deaths on the job per 100,000 workers last year, compared to 3.7 per 100,000 in 2008.

Obama administration Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was pleased by the drop, but again declared that one injured or dead worker on the job “is one too many.”

“While a decrease in the number of fatal work injuries is encouraging, we cannot – and will not – relent from our continued strong enforcement of workplace safety laws,” she said. “As the economy regains strength and more people re-enter the workforce, the department will remain vigilant to ensure workers are kept safe while they earn a paycheck.   After all, as I’ve said before, no job is a good job unless it is also safe.”

BLS warned the 2009 total is preliminary, noting final revised figures, usually released in about six months, add an average of 156 fatalities to the rolls every year.

Fatal on-the-job injuries declined in states, industries and sectors across the board, with few exceptions.  Numerically, an exception was Texas, where deaths rose by 3.6 percent.  It shot far past California for first place among the states in deaths on the job.  Oregon, with a 20 percent increase, to 66, was one of 10 other states where fatal job injuries rose.  The biggest percentage hike was in New Mexico (+35 percent).

In Michigan, there were 93 on-the-job fatalities in 2009, a drop of 26 percent from the year before.

Construction still led all occupations in fatal occupational injuries, with 607 in 2009, and fatalities rose among electricians, plumbers, and carpenters.  But the overall number of construction worker fatalities dropped by 16 percent, on top of a 19 percent decline the year before.  Construction laborers – who have more injuries than other building trades workers – saw fatalities drop by 7 percent, to 224, in 2009.

But the jobless rate among construction workers headed towards 20 percent in 2009 and has stayed high, accounting for the drop in fatalities.  “Economic conditions may explain much of this decline with total hours worked having declined 17 percent in construction in 2009, after a decline of 10 percent the year before,” BLS said.

Even those industries which traditionally have the greatest numbers of fatally injured workers saw big drops in fatal occupational injuries.  Those industries included transportation and materials moving (-28 percent, to 579), truckers (-32 percent), and protective service workers, such as Fire Fighters (-21 percent)