A look back to Workplace Injury Stats in 1992

Most Americans between the ages of 22 and 65 spend 40 to 50 percent of waking hours at work. Every year millions of Americans suffer injuries and thousands experience deaths in our workplaces. Yet little effort has been made to estimate either the extent of these injuries, deaths, and diseases or their cost to the economy. Thus, important questions about workplace safety and the economic resources expended due to workplace health problems remain unanswered.

In this study, we address these questions by presenting estimates of the incidence, prevalence, and costs of workplace-related injuries, illnesses, and deaths for the entire civilian workforce of the United States in 1992. We also consider controversies surrounding cost methodologies, estimate how these costs are distributed across occupations, consider who pays the costs, and address some policy issues.

Our major findings are as follows:

Roughly 6,371 job-related injury deaths, 13.3 million nonfatal injuries, 60,300 disease deaths, and 1,184,000 illnesses occurred in the U.S. workplace in 1992.

The total direct and indirect costs associated with these injuries and illnesses were estimated to be $155.5 billion, or nearly 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

Direct costs included medical expenses for hospitals, physicians, and drugs, as well as health insurance administration costs, and were estimated to be $51.8 billion.

The indirect costs included loss of wages, costs of fringe benefits, and loss of home production (e.g., child care provided by parent and home repairs), as well as employer retraining and workplace disruption costs, and were estimated to be $103.7 billion.

Injuries generated roughly 85 percent whereas diseases generated 15 percent of all costs.
These costs are large when compared to those for other diseases. The costs are roughly five times the costs for AIDS, three times the costs for Alzheimer's disease, more than the costs of arthritis, nearly as great as the costs for cancer, and roughly 82 percent of the costs of all circulatory (heart and stroke) diseases.

Workers' compensation covered roughly 27 percent of all costs. Taxpayers paid approximately 18 percent of these costs through contributions to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Costs were borne by injured workers and their families, by all other workers through lower wages, by firms through lower profits, and by consumers through higher prices.

Our study appears to be the first to use national data to produce estimates on costs for occupational injuries and illnesses. Prior studies have underestimated costs by ignoring nondisabling injuries, deaths, and workplace violence, by taking inadequate account of diseases, and, most importantly, by relying on only one or two sources of data.

The Annual Survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides the most reliable and comprehensive data on nonfatal injuries. However, it misses roughly 53 percent of job-related injuries. This omission, in part, is due to the exclusion of government employees and the self-employed and also, in part, due to illegal underreporting by private firms.

Contrary to the Annual Survey data, we find small firms have exceptionally high injury rates.
Occupations contributing the most to costs included truck drivers, laborers, janitors, nursing orderlies, assemblers, and carpenters. On a per capita basis, lumberjacks, laborers, millwrights, prison guards, and meatcutters contributed the most to costs.

Occupations at highest risk for carpal tunnel syndrome include dental hygienists, meatcutters, sewing machine operators, and assemblers. Among well-paid professions, dentists face the highest risks.

Any of the major sources of data, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, workers' compensation systems, or National Health Interview Survey, by themselves underestimate the numbers of injuries and illnesses.

Greater efforts need to be directed toward gathering data on job-related injuries and illnesses. The United States needs a comprehensive data bank for fatal and nonfatal injuries and all illnesses. Future researchers should not have to investigate the over 20 sources of primary data and 300 sources of secondary data that we investigated.