Will Work Comp Injuries Increase?

WorkCompWire arrived yesterday with the news that new employees get injured much more often than their more-experienced colleagues.

The Travelers provided the research, which confirmed  – and added more detail – to what we already (sort of) knew – about a third of injuries happen to workers with a year or less on the job.

This makes sense; newer workers are less experienced, have had less training, are likely younger and don’t know what they don’t know.

Not surprisingly the incidence rate varies by industry…again from the umbrella people…

Couple additional observations.

• Construction is a higher-severity industry, making newer workers even more susceptible to longer-term claims.
• Hospitality, construction, and transportation are higher-turnover industries, making it more likely the entire workforce is less experienced – and more of the workers are in their first year than in other sectors.

And here are related issues that deserve your attention:

• there’s a lot more turnover in employment than “normal” these days – which means more workers will be in that dangerous first year.
• construction is ramping up with billions in spending on governmental and private projects.
• logistics/transportation is under severe stress due to the ongoing supply chain problems

What does this mean for you?

All these factors suggest injuries may bump up later in 2022 and into 2023.

Kudos to the Travelers for the work; this is helpful indeed.

By Joe Paduda

Courtesy of Managed Care Matters

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