It’s Monday and for many of us that means the onset of a new workweek. One of the goals for each of us is return home safely after each and every working day. Unfortunately, there are a number of occupations in which that is unusually difficult.
According to the U.S. Labor Department, there were nearly three million nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses across the private sector last year, and other three quarters of a million such occurrences in the public sector. That works out to about three injuries and illnesses per one hundred private industry full time workers and five per one hundred workers in state and local governments.
Aquaculture, a subcategory of private sector agriculture that includes fish farming, reports the highest rate of nonfatal injury or illness at nearly fourteen per one hundred full time workers. State run nursing and residential care facilities rank second a twelve per one hundred.
Local police rank third, with more than 11 injuries and illnesses per one hundred full time workers. Furniture manufacturers are next in line at ten point eight per one hundred. Among the safest occupations is insurance.
