Recent research from a major think tank estimates that reported workplace injuries will increase by almost one percent by 2032, driven by workplace violence and potentially costing employers billions of dollars.
In 2023, 5,283 people were fatally injured at work in the United States, a 3.7 percent decrease from the 5,486 fatal injuries reported at work in 2022, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Thursday morning. There were also 1,172,800 nonfatal injuries and illnesses that affected U.S. workers in 2023, down from the 1,483,400 reported in 2022 and its estimated 75 million lost workdays.
Lost productivity in 2022 cost an estimated total of $167 billion, which included lost wages ($50.7 billion), administrative costs ($54 billion), and medical costs ($37.6 billion), according to the Brookings Institution’s report, Workplace injuries in a changing labor market, which was published on 5 December.
Occupational injuries can vary greatly depending on the job role and industry—from carpal tunnel syndrome and other musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) caused by repetitive tasks to falls or slips and electrical injuries. Regardless, any injury or illness linked to the workplace could cause an employee to miss work time.
The National Safety Council also looked at data from the BLS and found that the most frequently cited workplace safety standards included falls, respiratory illnesses, hazardous energy (such as exposure to electricity or an injury sustained while running machinery), eye and face injuries, caught in running equipment, and powered vehicles like forklifts, order pickers, or platform trucks.
The council also found that the top fatality events besides the above citations involved transportation incidents (almost 2,100 deaths), workplace violence (865 fatalities), and overexertion and bodily reaction (more than 1 million days away, restricted, or transferred).
The impacts of occupational injuries can be seen beyond financial and productivity statistics. They’re often linked to negative mental health outcomes, with an injured employee more likely to exhibit symptoms of severe psychological distress, such as anxiety or depression. Higher incidences of workplace injury have also been associated with an increase in substance abuse.
In the future, researchers expect that the changing U.S. economy will increase the incidence of workplace injuries, including a projected 4 percent increase in violent injuries across the entire U.S. workforce. Overall employment is predicted to add an estimated 4.7 million jobs by 2033, and future growth will likely occur in the healthcare and computer sectors.
“Home health aides are the job with the largest projected increase in employment and will be the largest occupation in the economy by 2032,” according to the Brookings report.
Home health aides fall under the larger umbrella of direct care workers, which also includes personal care aides, nursing assistants, orderlies, and psychiatric aides. Injuries or illnesses that affect people in these roles can include back strains and exposure to infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, notes Richard G. Frank, one of the authors of the report and director for Brookings’s Center on Health Policy.
“And then there’s workplace violence,” Frank says. “It turns out that being a psychiatric aide or a nursing home aide or a home healthcare aide has a lot of risk of violence.”
The report determined that if no new actions are taken to curb workplace injuries, that direct care workers will experience 3,199 more violent injuries annually in 2032 compared to 2022.
“We predict that in 2032, there will be 7,155 more violent occupational injuries annually than there were in 2022,” researchers wrote.
Original article posted by ASIS International