Is your number up?

Is your number up?

by Clair Urbain

The Department of Labor (DOL) recently released its National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries in 2003. Good news is mixed in with the bad.

The good news: Overall, job-related deaths have dropped slightly, continuing a gentle downward trend. In 2003, the study reports that a worker’s chance of dying on the job, across all occupations, was four in 100,000, unchanged from 2002.

The bad news: Construction-related fatalities continue to make up more than 20 percent of the fatalities while construction trades make up only seven percent of the workforce.

Deciphering the DOL reports shows that construction workers suffer almost a four-fold risk of being killed on the job with 11.7 fatalities per 100,000 workers employed.

Think about this: Every morning when you walk out your door to go to work, you are nearly three times more likely to be killed on the job than your neighbor. Your chances are better in comparison if your neighbor works in transportation and warehousing, agriculture and related fields, or mining.

Another way to put that risk in perspective with our daily life is to compare your chances of being killed on the job vs. your chance of winning the Powerball lottery.

The Powerball lottery promises odds of 1:120 million to win the big prize. Millions quench their Powerball fever once or twice a week with a dollar or more (which only infinitesimally increases your odds), hoping for the big bucks.

With a little mathematical magic, let’s put the two “chances” in perspective:

A construction worker’s “chance” of dying on the job is .117 in 1,000. That same construction worker’s chance of winning the Powerball lottery is .00000833 in 1,000.

Consider the odds, and share this with your fellow workers. If it makes sense to “invest” one dollar in the Powerball lottery, doesn’t it make even more sense to practice safe working behavior on the jobsite? The odds are much greater of winning and, even though the Powerball lottery offers some handsome payouts, all the money in the world can’t bring a person back to life.

Only you and the workers around you can improve your odds. Wouldn’t it be great if the odds of getting killed at work were the same as your chance of winning the Powerball lottery?

Published in the November/December 2004 issue of Contractor Tools and Supplies magazine.