Rousmaniere: Projecting Work Injuries to 2022

Where are work injuries heading, in number, economic sector, type of job and worker?  We can find answers through estimates, some no better than guesses.  Yet, the next five-plus years certainly leads to overall decline injuries. Worker demographics raise some public policy issues. Automation will not likely drastically lower the number of work injuries in the way some have conjectured.

No one knows how many lost time compensable injuries occur today. The Feds tell us that about 900,000 injuries, with at least one day away from work, happened in 2015.  Fed data has been shown to miss a large number of injuries than end up as workers’ comp claims, primarily due to delayed filing by the worker.  I estimate that about 700,000 lost time compensable injuries (LTC) occurred in 2015.

Between 2012 and 2022, the Feds have estimated that jobs in the 100 most-filled occupations in the country will grow by 11%. The median yearly growth will be 1%.  If injury frequency persists in declining annually by about 2.5%, as in the past, absolute count lost time injuries will decline by 15% over this span of years. That’s more than if California ceased incurring any work injuries.

The table shows how LTC claims were likely distributed today:

This distribution will not likely change by much between 2012 and 2022, years for which the Feds have estimated employment for hundreds of job categories.  The basic reason for little change is that that the relative handful of jobs expected to change a lot in numbers of workers usually come in today at less than 1% of the workforce.

Construction’s job of “laborer” captures key aspects of job dynamics of interest to the workers’ compensation industry.  Any serious growth is vitally dependent on economic performance of the entire country, not a region. And, as we will note again below, this and other key injury-risky occupations to watch are heavily populated by foreign-born unauthorized workers. And, their coverage by workers’ comp is comprised by independent contractor practices. 

The small number of injuries linked to manufacturing is the result of two forces: Great decline in numbers of workers, and safety (plus return to work) improved to where the lost time injury rate for manufacturing workers, one out of a hundred, is on par with other workers. Between 2012 and 2022, of the 20 jobs among top 100 that are expected to grow at a markedly higher rate than average, only two are primarily manufacturing. Most are in construction, healthcare and information systems (this last one last with no injury risk of consequence).

Consider the 20 occupations that in 2012 had the highest injury rates of the top 100 jobs. In both 2012 and 2022, they account for about one quarter of the total top 100 jobs but about 60% all LTC injuries.  In other words, a claims payer that wanted to deep dive into injury risk need only study a relative handful of occupations. 

The most extreme example of a high risk fast growing job is personal care aides, expected to grow by over 4% yearly, and the only job for which we can expect absolute increase of LTC injuries per year of more than 10,000. This job captures key characteristics of the worker at risk: low paid, more than one quarter of workers are foreign born (many unauthorized), and in jobs where independent worker status is a real potential whether legal or not.

Were the workers’ comp industry to frame a legislative policy aimed to increase its demand for services, the policy platform would seek to normalize the work status of unauthorized workers and to aggressively restrict independent worker status.  The “gig economy” issues for workers’ comp boils down to independent workers’ status.

Higher risk jobs that will be increasing above average include: Construction laborers; janitors and cleaners; maids and housekeepers; laborers and freight, stock and material movers; drivers in sales jobs; carpenters; personal care aides; and registered nurses.  Only a person who has been living on Mars will fail to note how foreign-born workers fill most of these jobs, and that independent contractor status can and does remove many from workers’ comp coverage.

A final note on automation:  When one looks at jobs closely, one sees that human skills are needed, such as persuasion, and see collateral tasks, such as a deliver van driver’s role in off-loading goods. A recent study estimates the how few jobs are completely eliminated when the jobs are more fully understood.  The percentage of jobs at risk of complete elimination drops from about 75% to 18%. 

For us, automation is of interest to the degree it eliminates injury risk, not the job per se.   The major injury risks for drivers are loading and unloading a truck. And that study has not been done across industries or, to my knowledge, in individual industries. Thus, we are looking into a fog bank.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Rousmaniere is widely known throughout the workers’ compensation industry, both for his writing and consulting experience. Based in the picture perfect New England town of Woodstock, VT, he is a regular on the conference circuit, and is deeply in tune with trends and developments within the industry. His passion is writing and presenting on issues largely related to immigration, and he maintains a blog on the subject at www.workingimmigrants.com.

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