New data suggests transport and warehousing industries are among Australia’s most risky for workers
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 transport, warehousing and postal industries were tied second on the danger list.
This segment’s position is notable as it contains just 9.44 per cent of the employees covered by the data, yet accounts for 24 per cent of workplace fatalities.
The data also showed that within the industry, two-thirds of the fatalities involved the use of a vehicle.
Sitting above the logistics sector and taking the crown as Australia’s most dangerous segment, according to the numbers, is agriculture, forestry and fishing with a risk score of 30.65.
It is worth noting that across the entire data set, 47 per cent of all workplace fatalities came from these two segments.
The findings also show that those under 25 are over four times as likely to die in the workplace as those aged over 55.
The construction industry came in third place, the manufacturing sector came in fourth and the mining industry was fifth on the list.
Although it sounds like all bad news, the findings also showed that over the last seven years the fatality rate has decreased 47 per cent.
The last year recorded in the data, 2014, had the lowest number of fatalities of any year recorded.