Work safety statistics show the impact of measures taken by governments and individual companies to reduce workplace hazards for their workers. These hazards can include physical harm such as accidents. They can also include damage to mental health or employee well-being. Not to mention the Covid-19 hazard workers have had to deal with for the past few years. Workers must abide by certain rules in order to limit these workplace hazards.

Today, a large proportion of the working class enjoy the security of safety laws and regulations strictly imposed by the government, at least in the developed world. It took decades of suffering and constant pressure from the working community to implement these regulations.

Concerning workers’ safety and COVID-19, Jack Dennerlein, adjunct professor of ergonomics and safety in the department of environmental health at Harvard University, said:

 

“COVID-19 has stressed the system. All the flaws that have been in place are totally exposed and have come to the forefront of our daily conversations….”

 

 So, with that in mind, let us walk you through some critical safety work statistics after the pandemic. We will also look at some older statistics for comparative purposes. These stats should give you an insight into workers’ safety and how it has changed after the pandemic.

 

Work Safety Statistics after the Pandemic

Key Statistics on Work Safety After the Pandemic

 

• According to a study by the Pew Research Center in January 2022, 42% of U.S. employees prefer remote work over office work because of COVID exposure concerns. In comparison, this was as high as 57% back in the fall of 2020.

 

• According to the North Carolina Department of Labor, Covid-related fatalities made up about a third of all fatalities in 2021. This is up from about 28.5% in 2020. Most (almost 66%) of Covid-related deaths in 2021 were in the services industry. Within the services industry, most of the fatalities were from employees in the healthcare sector.

 

• According to the U.S. Census Bureau, deaths in 2021 were up 19.7% from 2019. This indicates that COVID-19 continues to significantly impact mortality rates despite the widespread availability of vaccines. This figure was calculated using provisional data and figures from the National Center for Health Statistics.

 

• The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has 1850 officers throughout the U.S. by July 2022. This number is almost 2.5x what it was at the end of FY 2019 and 2x what it was at the end of FY 2020. These officers are responsible for implementing OSHA workplace safety guidelines or requirements.

 

• According to the latest International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates, by July 2022, sixty thousand deaths happen annually on construction sites. In industrialized countries like America, 25-40% of work-related deaths occur on construction sites.

 

• The International Labor Organization also mentioned in their latest report (up to July 2022) that the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) estimates almost 11,000 cases of (actual) occupational accidents and fatalities compared to only 5,850 reported on paper. That should mean nearly half of the occupational accidents and fatalities in 2021 are off the record. 

 

• According to the latest estimates by the ILO, up to July 2022, some 2.3 million women and men worldwide ran into fatal work-related accidents or diseases every year (including 2021). This corresponds to over 6000 deaths every day. 

 

• According to other estimates by the same source, there are around 340 million occupational accidents and 160 million victims of work-related illnesses worldwide annually, including in 2021.  

What is Workplace Health and Well-Being? 

According to the ILO:

 

“Workplace Wellbeing relates to all aspects of working life, from the quality and safety of the physical environment, to how workers feel about their work, their working environment, the climate at work and work organization.”

 

A worker’s well-being promotes a healthy workplace environment and long-term sustainability for their physical health.

The increased rate of injuries and fatalities within the workforce sectors has raised an alarming concern among policymakers around the world. As a result, there has been some work, including research, to protect the well-being and promote healthy workplace conditions for employees. This includes research on workers’ health like background studies, supporting literature, common practices among companies, and a model for a healthy workplace by the World Health Organization. 

 

How Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Impact Workplace Safety?

A study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information published in August 2021 looked at the pandemic’s effects on workplace accidents in countries like China, South Korea, and Japan. They used data from KOSHA and the National Statistical Office of Korea. 

According to the study, the death rate increased by 0.01% (deaths per 10,000 workers) between December 2019 and December 2020. In contrast, workplace accidents such as diseases and nonfatal injuries decreased by 0.01% during the same period. 

Surprisingly, within these accidents in Korea, the number of injured persons decreased by 1.8% (1664 out of 10,000 workers). At the same time, sick persons increased by 801 out of 10,000 (5.3%). This makes sense because of the smaller number of people allowed in the workplace, alongside the threat of the novel infection.

 

The study showed a similar result in Japan, where workplace accidents went down by 5.1% in 2020. However, at the same time, there was an increase of 4.4% in occupational injuries. (Note that the NCBI may have technical differences between ‘workplace accidents’ and ‘occupational injuries’).

Hong Kong had a similar trend of workplace injuries, a fall of 2429 cases from 2019 to 2020. 

There isn’t any in-depth research on workplace accidents of American employees by the National Library of Medicine. However, one might draw some conclusions about the broader developed world from this data as Japan, and South Korea are developed countries with good economic growth.

 

How Many COVID-19 Workplace Infections Were There?

A study published in mid-2020 looked into employee exposure to coronavirus in the US. It was published by PLOS ONE, an NFP platform with over 200,000 published research articles. They used employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to the data, 144.7 million people in the United States were officially in employer-employee arrangements by May 2018. 

And according to the study, 18.4% of the American workforce (over 26 million people) were working in occupations where exposure to infection occurred more than once a month.

 

According to the same study, 10% of the American workforce was in occupations where they were exposed to the virus more than once a week. Almost 90% of healthcare practitioners and support workers were exposed to COVID more than once a month and 75% more than once a week.

 

Furthermore, 52% of protective service occupations such as firefighters, police officers, and transportation security got exposed to the virus more than once a month. Community and social service workers also had 32.4% exposure to COVID-19 more than once a month.

 

Here is a table to better understand the number and percentage of US workers and the occupations where they were at risk of COVID-19 exposure.

 Image source: Journals.plos.org

We see a similar story in Great Britain.

According to a Health and Security Executive report, 93,000 workers in Great Britain suffering from COVID-19 in 2020-2021 thought they got the virus in their workplace. 645,000 British workers with work-related illnesses had symptoms caused or worsened by COVID. 

COVID suspected reports from 10th April 2020 to 31st May 2022 recorded 64% of all employers’ accounts as health and social work workers. In other words, more than 60% of people with suspected COVID worked in the health sector.

 

As for the distribution of cases across Great Britain, 70% of workers’ COVID-19 reports were from England, 13 % in Scotland,10% in Wales, and 7% from other areas. 

Image source: hse.gov.uk

 

Work-Related Diseases and Disorders: Which Ones Are the Most Dangerous?

The table below is from a study by the International Labor Organization. It shows the different types of work-related diseases and disorders and how common they are in workers in the EU.

Also, note that both of the studies we are about to look at below are from before the pandemic. So we will also look at studies relevant to the pandemic after these.

Image Source: International Journal of Labor Research 

 

According to the same study, 2.4 million workers died from work-related diseases worldwide in 2017. 

The following were the leading causes of death in descending order:

 

1. Cardiovascular diseases
2. Cancer
3. Infectious diseases

 

Cardiovascular diseases (31% resulting in death)  and cancer (26% resulting in death) were the most life-threatening illnesses. Infectious diseases had the lowest percentage of the death rate at only 9%. Whereas, in 2017, occupational cancer killed 742,335 workers globally.

Industrialized countries with high-income regions got the most significant work fatalities from work-related diseases such as cancer (52% of the deaths). Occupational accidents and infectious diseases contributed minimally, around 2.3% each. 

The ILO also carried out a study of deaths due to carcinogen exposure. Their study in 2015 reported 75,279 fatalities because of such exposure. The latest survey in 2019 on deaths to the same variable showed 101,633 lost lives in the EU. Due to the growth of carcinogen-related industries in the European Union, more fatalities occurred from toxic waste. 

 

 

What Impact Did COVID-19 Have On Work-Related Diseases and Disorders?

The COVID-19 infection rate was 19.4% in 2020. The World Health Organization (WHO) gave an estimate of 82.4 million cases of COVID exposure worldwide (this number is likely higher considering the number of unreported cases) during the year. Therefore, taking 19.4% of 82.4 million cases, there were almost 16 million COVID-19 non-fatal work-related infections in 2020. 

At the time of writing, there are more than half a billion recorded cases of COVID worldwide, according to the WHO. Furthermore, there are over 6 million recorded COVID-19 deaths.

There was also an article published on EHS Today in late 2020 that discusses the connection between workplace injuries and COVID-19. Due to COVID-19, nearly 500 attendees of a velocity EHS virtual event polled on having worker stress and muscular discomfort. The results showed that 95% felt that their musculoskeletal disorder would increase or remain the same even after COVID when they returned to work. 

 

Fatal Vs. Non-Fatal Work-Related Injuries and Accidents

Fatal 

According to the North Carolina Department of Labor, Covid-related fatalities made up about a third of all fatalities in 2021 in North Carolina. This is up from about 28.5% in 2020. A significant proportion of these fatalities were from employees in the healthcare sector.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, deaths in 2021 were up 19.7% from 2019. The 2019 figures represent the pre-pandemic levels of fatalities here.

Furthermore, according to a study by the ILO, one fatal accident occurred for every 2,050 non-fatal accidents in some countries in the EU. 

Image source: Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries Summary, 2020

 

Non-Fatal 

According to self-reports from the Labour Force Survey 2020/21 done by the HSE, almost 440,000 workers in Great Britain survived a non-fatal work injury during 2020/21. However, reports from employers about such injuries were far lower, at around 51,000.

 

Studies done in EU countries published by the ILO in 2021 regarding Occupational Accidents in the European Union show the raw reported number of non-fatal accidents in the workplace. 2.4 million to 6.9 million non-fatal accidents happen in the EU that result in 3 days of absence per injury. 

 

The Impact of Workplace Injuries and Accidents on the Economy

Death, injury, and absence from work due to a particular accident can cause a 4% loss of the world’s gross domestic product annually, says the ILO. That is about $1.25 trillion in annual losses to the global GDP. According to recent estimates based on data from the World Bank, only about a dozen countries in the world (7.7% of the total number of countries) have GDPs over this amount.

 

Covid, in particular, also hit the global economy in 2020. According to a Statista report published in April 2022, while the original forecast for 2020 estimated 2.9% growth, the actual result was a fall of 3.4%. However, the economy did bounce back in 2021 with a growth of 5.6% against expected growth of 5.7%. For 2022, the current estimates are around 4.5% growth, which is about 25% less than the expected growth in 2021.

 

How Many Accidents and Injuries Took Place in the Workplace?

According to an article by the Bureau of Labor Statistics published in late 2020, 2.8 million injuries happen in private sector workplaces. The most commonly occurring injuries are strains and tears. In 2019 there were 32,650 workers with this type of injury. 

 

• The nursing sector had 370 injuries per every 10,000 workers.

 

• Similarly, heavy truck drivers have 360 non-fatal accidents for every 10,000 full-time workers. 

 

• The highest job fatalities with 23.3 accidents per 100,000 workers belong to primary industries like agriculture, forestry, hunting, and fishing (shown collectively as agriculture in the graph below).

 

• According to the ILO, based on the latest data available till July 2022, 60,000 deaths occur annually on construction sites. 25-40% of work-related deaths occur on construction sites in industrialized countries like America. That too, only when the construction industry only employs 6-10% of the workforce.

 

Even if a worker in construction has not run into a fatal accident, they have a significant chance of facing health issues. 30% of construction workers have back pains and other muscular disorders.

 

• Furthermore, the transportation industry had 14 fatalities per 10,000 workers, while the construction industry had 9.5 deaths per 10,000 men. 

 

There was a total loss of $250 billion to the U.S. economy because of workplace injuries and illnesses. The graph below shows a detailed picture of the stats we mentioned above.

Image Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

 

Do Workers Feel Safe in 2022?

Pew Research Center conducted a study to better understand the work experiences of employed adults in the U.S. nearly two years into the pandemic. The data for this research was collected in late January 2022 and involved over 5000 U.S. employees in either part-time or full-time jobs.

According to the study, people were not as afraid of going to their workplace because of the pandemic as they were back at the start of 2020. These people have the choice of going to their offices but opt out of their own accord. 42% of these U.S. employees cited concerns about Coronavirus exposure as a major reason why they preferred working from home. In comparison, this percentage was as high as 57% back in the fall of 2020. That is a decrease of almost 36% between fall 2020 and Jan 2022.

The same study shows that while the fear of coronavirus has gone down, employee preference has also changed. By the start of 2022, more people (76%) preferred working from home than they did in 2020 (60%). This shows an increase of about 25% between fall 2020 and Jan 2022.

It is interesting to note that by the time of this study, 75.1% of the total U.S. population had received at least one dose of the Coronavirus vaccines, according to the CDC. Moreover, 63.6% of the total U.S. population had been fully vaccinated. 

So even though the majority of the overall U.S. population was vaccinated by the time this study was conducted, a significant number of employees (42%) still had serious concerns about COVID exposure.

 

How Many Employees Are Concerned About Exposure to COVID?

According to an article by the University of Washington, millions of workers were at risk of COVID exposure every week by March 2020. Over 14 million U.S. workers were working in occupations where exposure was possible every week. Similarly, more than 26 million people worked where exposure occurred monthly. 

EHSToday surveyed 1000 respondents in mid-2020 from a random sample of US employees and asked them about their coronavirus concerns.

54% of the employees in the U.S. said that they’re worried about exposure to COVID-19 at their jobs. 43% of workers at the workplace want the employees to test for COVID. 17% of survey participants thought the COVID result would affect their job. 56% show the urge to have the right to know if a fellow worker has tested positive for COVID. 

 

What Workers Need to Know About COVID-19 Prevention in the Workplace

There are a couple of things to note here. But before we get to those, it is worth mentioning that COVID restrictions are waning throughout the globe at the time of writing. The things listed below are only relevant for places going through emergency surges of the pandemic or situations of the same sort.

 

• First off, following Industriall.org’s advice in an article published on the onset of the pandemic, one of the most important things workers should consider in preventing the spread of COVID-19 at the workplace is personal hygiene. 

 

• Personal hygiene must include using hand sanitizers and implementing handwashing rules. This can help ensure that COVID is less likely to be transmitted. 

 

• Secondly, ensure that the working space is sanitized and germ-free, especially when it comes to industrial machinery. This should help prevent the spread of the virus.

 

• Thirdly, the COVID-19 vaccine is mandatory for every worker who walks into the workplace. The vaccine not only boosts a worker’s immunity to fight the virus but also breaks the chain of people at risk of transmission. 

 

• The fourth thing worth mentioning is face masks. Even if workers are fully vaccinated, they must wear a face mask covering the mouth and the nose. 

 

• Lastly, both employers and employees must maintain social distance to minimize the chance of infection. If possible, employers should make arrangements to allow working from home. 

 

It is also worth noting that OSHA officers who are responsible for overseeing the implementation of worker safety policies are spread too thin to oversee everything. According to the latest data, they have 1,850 inspectors for 130 million American workers. These safety officials are spread over 8 million worksites throughout America. There is only one compliance officer for every 70,000 workers. 

How Long Are COVID-19 Restrictions Going to Stay in Place?

Governments either already have or are lifting COVID-19 restrictions in several countries gradually. This has come after a fair bit of time and practical government policies to control the spread of the virus and spread public acceptance of vaccines. 

In June 2022, Global Rescue published an article on COVID-19 restrictions. They collected data from several reliable sources like the U.S. Department of State Travel Advisories, Johns Hopkins University Case Tracker, and BBC Pandemic Tracking.

According to the article, people travelling by air are no longer required to be vaccinated to board a plane or train in Canada by June 20th, 2022. However, countries like Canada still require anybody from the outside entering the country to be fully vaccinated.

The US government removed the compulsory COVID-19 testing requirement for inbound international travelers on the 12th of June, 2022. The White House COVID-19 coordinator, Jeffery Zients, announced on 20th September 2021 that travelers from the European Schengen zone, UK and Ireland, China and India would be allowed to enter the United States by air from November onwards. 

To sum it up, most countries around the world are in the process of either easing or completely lifting the previously strict COVID-19 restrictions.

 

Conclusion

The pandemic drastically increased the severity and quantity of workplace accidents. Workers being prone to infections obviously affects the economy. It creates losses. And these economic losses lead to businesses shutting down, which in turn influences the money spent on safety and preventive measures for workers.  The damage to the economy during 2019 and 2020 also made non-fatal diseases harder to handle for people because of a lack of funds. After all, businesses on the brink of collapse can not really take care of their employees.

But let us keep in mind that, at least hopefully, we have exited the most intense phase of the pandemic. With the global vaccine rollout well underway and the state of emergency subsiding, we should have some well-deserved respite from the two-year-long devastation of the pandemic.  We should also see trends going back to pre-pandemic levels in the coming years. Or better yet, trends that are even better than pre-pandemic levels.