The farming, construction and manufacturing industries are among Australia’s most dangerous, according to new data.
The team at Finder.com.au has meshed Safe Work Australia’s Australian Workers’ Compensation statistics with the Work-Related Traumatic Injury Fatalities report stats to create a ‘risk score’ for each industry, by examining the number of serious injury claims and the number of fatalities as a percentage of the total working population.
The numbers showed Australia’s most dangerous industry is agriculture, forestry and fishing with a risk score of 30.65.
The study found that between 2003 and 2014 there were 686 workplace fatalities in the industry. The numbers also showed that over one percent of total workers in the industry had lodged a workplace compensation claim.
The transport, postal and warehousing sector came in second on the danger list.
This sector’s position is notable as it contains just 9.44 percent of the employees covered by the data, yet accounts for 24 percent of workplace fatalities. The data also showed that within the industry, two-thirds of the fatalities involved the use of a vehicle.
It’s worth noting that across the entire data set, 47 percent of all workplace fatalities came from these two industries.
The construction industry came in third place on the list with a total danger score of 17.68. The industry also had the third-highest number of compensation claims, with over 11,535 lodged in 2014.
In fourth place on the list was the manufacturing sector, with 261 lives lost in workplace accidents since 2003. The industry also had the second-highest rate of worker’s comp claims at 12,390 in 2014.
Fifth place on this dubious honour roll goes to the mining industry.
Mining injuries seem to be particularly localised in New South Wales and Queensland. The sector recorded 37 workplace deaths between 2010 and 2014, with 20 of them coming from these two states.
The findings also show that those under 25 are over four times as likely to die in the workplace as those aged over 55.
Although it sounds like all bad news, the findings also showed that over the last seven years the fatality rate has decreased 47 percent. The last year recorded in the data, 2014, had the lowest number of fatalities of any year recorded.
For more information, visit www.finder.com.au