On average, there were 3.3 deaths per 100,000 full-time workers during 2013. This breaks down to 88 a week, or more than 12 every single day.
According to OSHA, almost 10% of the deaths that occurred during this time happened because someone was struck by an object. The majority of these deaths come from the construction industry, where more than 36.5% of all deaths were contributed to someone falling from something like a platform or another tall object.
To a certain degree, this makes a lot of sense. Construction sites are naturally dangerous environments filled with heavy machinery and other equipment that needs to be operated very specifically to preserve safety at all times.
Make no mistake: electricity is also and will always be dangerous and should be treated as such. You can never take too many precautions when working around live electricity, particularly because the “worst case scenario” can be so deadly so quickly.
But, things are beginning to look up. When workplace safety statistics began to be tracked in the 1970s, there were almost 38 worker deaths per day in unsafe environments across the United States. The number has decreased to 12 per day in 2013. Though that is good news, there is still more work to be done to get that number down as close to 0 as it can possibly go.
Actual employees aren’t the only ones that should be paying attention to workplace safety. Though independent contractors are not technically “on the payroll” at a company, they’re still very much in danger in a dangerous environment.
Many business owners look to OSHA rules and regulations as a burden. They see them as an extra layer of “red tape” that they must go through in order to do their jobs on a daily basis. The fact of the matter is that OSHA has made a measurable difference with regards to
since its inception.
Not only has the overall level of deaths dramatically decreased during a period of time when employment in the United States has doubled, but worker injuries are also down from 10.9 injuries per 100 workers in the 1970s to just 3.3 per 100 workers in 2013. OSHA is not something to be feared or looked at as a burden. It is something to be celebrated and embraced.
Check out the 8 most common statistics that you need to know about workplace safety.