February 27, 2023
How safe is the workplace these days? We don’t really know, since given the nature of the federal government’s data-crunching capabilities, it’ll take another year for us to get the statistics on workplace incidents in 2022. But we do finally know how safe the workplace was at U.S.-based employers in 2021, but there’s not much good news in the numbers:
- Nonfatal injuries and illnesses were down in 2021 by 1.8% over 2020.
- Fatal work injuries were up by 8.9% year-over-year.
- The impact of COVID-19 on the workplace in 2020-2021 was significant but exactly how significant is not yet known.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 5,190 people died on the job in 2021, compared to 4,764 in 2020. Also, while total workplace injuries and illnesses dropped somewhat year-over-year, the number of injuries actually