Most Americans between the ages of 22 and 65 spend almost 50% of their waking hours at work, and every year millions of Americans suffer injuries and thousands die as a result of workplace injuries and accidents. The total direct and indirect costs associated with these injuries were estimated to be $155.5 billion or nearly 3% of the gross domestic product (GDP). Direct costs included medical expenses for hospitals, doctors, medications as well as health administration costs. Indirect costs include loss of wages, cost of fringe benefits and employer retraining and workplace disruption costs.
Workers' Compensation covers roughly 27% of all these costs and taxpayers paid approximately 18% of these costs through contributions to Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.
Workplace deaths and injuries may be decreasing according to recent statistics published by the United States Department of Labor and Industries; however, when workplace accidents do occur, the injuries are usually serious and sometimes fatal. Construction workers, especially, are in a high-risk industry, and more work for construction companies means more pressure on construction workers to produce.
Injury rates are high in the building trades, in natural resource extraction and in some manufacturing industries. According to Leonard Smith, a spokesman for the Teamsters union local headquartered in Seattle, Washington, some employers are just not making safety a priority. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, it is estimated that 1,200 American construction workers die in falls on the job each year. While the construction industry only employs about 7 percent of the nation's workforce, construction sites accounted for 21 percent of workplace deaths.
One of the possible solutions offered to help decrease the number of construction work site injuries is to increase the inspectors-per-worker ratio in the states that do not have enough inspectors for the size of the state. For example, Idaho has just nine accident investigators covering the entire state whereas Washington just hired 11 additional inspectors for the state assigned solely to examine and certify cranes.
If other states would follow Washington's lead and hire more inspectors, the number of work site injuries and deaths may decrease in time. In the meantime, industry workers must continue to be very careful at their work sites and be aware of the hazards that surround them.
