Dying on the Job: The Numbers

Fred Noland

​After the deaths of a pair of San Francisco firefighters, SF Weekly pored through labor statistics to learn just how often tragedies of this sort occur. The answer: a lot less often than you'd think. It turns out janitors, automotive store clerks, and cabbies die on the job at a far higher clip than firefighters. And fishermen out-die everyone; a cabbie selling timing belts and mopping up on a fishing vessel is asking for it.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which provided the mordant data we reported on, this week came out with its most current analysis of workplace death. Here's what we can learn from the 4,547 instances of reported deaths on the job in 2010, a statistical dead heat -- no pun intended -- from the 4,551 workplace deaths in 2009:

• While the notion of workplace death conjures up gruesome images of rock-crushers, pile-drivers, and bottomless septic tanks, the No. 1 killer is still heading out for a trip. Thirty-nine percent of all "fatal occupational injuries or events" occurred via "transportation incidents."

• There were 506 workplace homicides last year. Of those, 401 were shootings; 34 were stabbings; and, doing the math, 71 were of a sort the report does not deign to mention.

• "Falls" killed 635 workers last year. "Falls to a lower level" accounted for 515 of those; "fall from a ladder" wiped out 129 people; "fall from a roof" snuffed 117; "fall from scaffold, staging" nixed 44; and "fall on same level" eliminated 93. America's Funniest Home Videos doesn't seem so funny anymore.

• California had a huge drop in fatal workplace injuries between 2009 and 2010: 409 to 302. At 456 deaths, Texas remains the deadliest workplace (482 in '09).

• They don't call it "The Deadliest Catch" for nothing. "Fishers and related fishing workers" is far and away the most lethal profession with a fatal work injury rate of 116 per 100,000 workers. Also very dangerous: Loggers (92); pilots (71); farmers (41); and mining machine operators (39). To put those numbers in perspective, the overall fatal injury work rate is 3.5.

• While workplace homicides are down 7 percent from 2009, homicides involving women jumped by 13 percent. We'd make a joke about this -- but our editor would kill us.

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