A look from at the findings of the Bureau of Labor Statistics listing the most dangerous professions in the United States.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently updated its Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries which tells us which are the most hazardous professions to work in within the US. The CFOI builds up a picture about the circumstances of the death of an employee using death certificates, workers’ compensation reports and Federal and State administrative reports regarding the incident.
Which Workers Pose Risk to Life Insurance Companies?
The figures help inform employees about the various risk areas involved in their work, aid the promotion of better work practices and are used to improve workplace safety standards; in fact the National Safety Council uses the data as the basis for its information and research. There is however, another use for these statistics –as a tool for life insurance companies to help them apportion risk to potential policy holders – life insurance premiums will be higher for those working in the most hazardous industries since they will be a higher risk to insure.
The Top Five Riskiest Professions
Some of the results may be eye-opening – jobs which many people may consider very hazardous do not even make it into the top 15, whereas others ranked near the top may never have been previously perceived as especially unsafe; one thing which you can be sure of is that the life insurance industry will be up to date with the statistics.
- Someone who works in a fishing related industry. Fishermen had fatalities per 100K at 111.8 (total fatalities in 2008 were 38) – and most of these fatalities had to do with transportation work.
- Logging workers had a fatality rate of 86.4 per 100k employees, but a higher overall fatality rate of 78 in 2008.
- Aircraft pilots and flight engineers. with 70 fatalities in every 100k workers and an even higher overall fatality rate of 87 deaths in 2008.
- Structural iron and steel workers. These workers had 45.5 deaths for every 100k employees and 40 deaths in 2008.
- Farmers and ranchers. These agricultural and ranching occupations had 39.5 fatal incidents out of every 100k and 293 deaths in 2007.
Also high up on the list are truck drivers and refuse collectors (who’d have thunk?!), and behind them the police, roofers and taxi drivers.
Tags: bureau of labor statistics, census, dangerous jobs, life insurance, occupations