Non-Fatal Workplace Injuries in Ohio Below National Average

Ohio’s rate of non-fatal workplace injuries is below the national average, according to the head of the state’s primary workers’ compensation insurance provider.

Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) Administrator/CEO Steve Buehrer is urging employers to review online state and national data on workplace injuries “to better understand where injuries and illnesses are occurring in their industries and make changes to ensure their workers do not become a part of these statistics in the future.”

The data compiled as part of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 2012 Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII) is available on the BWC website. The 2012 survey results showed Ohio had 3.2 recordable injuries and/or illnesses per 100 full-time workers, lower than the national average of 3.7.

The survey estimates a total of 129,200 recordable cases of non-fatal occupational injuries and illnesses took place in Ohio in 2012. About 28 percent of the cases involved one or more days off of work; about 18 percent involved one or more days working in job restriction/transfer; and the remaining 53 percent were recordable cases without time off of work.

In the private sector, transportation and warehousing were found to have the most non-fatal injury and illness incidents. Other industries with high incident rates were healthcare and social assistance, manufacturing, retail trade and construction.

Statistics for the public industry sector include local governments only and reveal that workers in utilities had higher incident rates of occupational injuries than any other public sector industry. That was followed by transportation and warehousing, healthcare and social assistance and public administration.