Risk & Business Magazine Spectrum Insurance Fall 2019 | Page 31

WORKPLACE INJURIES
T
he number of workplace
injury claims continues
to decline year after year
despite significant changes
in workforce demographics
that experts thought would increase
claims frequency, according to a
report by the National Council of
Compensation Insurance (NCCI).
The number of workers aged 55 and
over has nearly doubled since 2006. At
the same time, that age group began
to suffer more workplace injuries than
younger workers, when years ago it
suffered less. Declines in frequency
rates across all age groups offset the
impact of that switch.
In fact, claim frequency declined
since 2006 for every demographic
group identified in the report. Overall,
frequency declined 30 percent from
2006 to 2017, according to Bureau
of Labor Statistics (BLS) data. NCCI
calculated an even larger decline of
32.6 percent during that period, using
insurer data.
James Lynch, chief actuary of the
Insurance Information Institute, said
that the data clearly shows why insurer
loss ratios are at historic lows and
employers have enjoyed double-digit
decreases in premiums.
“There’s good news, and there’s better
news,” he said. “Frequency is going
down everywhere. It’s going down by
age, it’s going down by sector, it’s going
down by gender.”
Lynch said the improved safety of
workplaces follows larger societal
changes that have led to improved
safety in general. The percentage of
smokers has gone down, people are
eating healthier, and the crime rate has
declined.
Workers may be safer, but they are also
older: 22.4 percent were 55 or older in
2016, almost double their 12 percent
share in 2006, according to BLS data.
Work injury numbers are dropping
despite that increase. Older workers
were once less likely to be hurt at
work, but in recent years, they have
become more accident-prone than
their younger peers. While injury rates
did decline for workers 55 to 64, the
rate dropped far more dramatically
for younger workers. In 2017, workers
aged 25 to 44 became the group with
the lowest injury incidence rates, in
part due to an uptick in injury rates for
workers 65 and older, according to the
NCCI report.
Females also make up a larger share of
the US workforce and now represent 47
percent of all workers.
Women continue to be less injury
prone than men, but the difference
between the genders has diminished
as female workers increased their
numbers in male-dominated
industries such as transportation and
manufacturing.
In 2017, men had 17 percent more lost-
day injuries than women, compared
to 34 percent more injuries in 2006,
according to BLS statistics.
10 YEARS AGO
Mark Walls, vice president of
communications and strategic
management for Safety National,
said that the NCCI report stands in
contrast to industry concerns 10 years
ago, when many feared that increasing
numbers of older workers would boost
loss costs through more severe claims.
But Walls said the frequency numbers
may change. He said research by
NCCI and others has shown that
workplace accident rates tend to
increase when unemployment rates
are low as less experienced and
sometimes less physically fit workers
join the workforce. The current US
unemployment rate is near historic
lows.
Walls said he’s heard anecdotally from
insurance claims managers that claims
frequency has started to tick up. Those
numbers just aren’t yet available to
researchers.
“We have had a significant shifting of
people from not working to working,
including people not working for
physical reasons,” he said. “What the
industry thinks we are seeing is that
the new workers in the workforce are
not as well trained and sometimes are
not in as good physical condition.”
That brings Walls to another red f lag,
which wasn’t covered by the NCCI
report. He said when workers are
injured of late, they are far more likely
to produce a “mega-claim” costing
$1 million or more. Walls said while
the overall workplace injury rate has
declined, the frequency of $1 million
claims has gone up.
“It used to be a $5 million loss was huge
and $10 million was rare,” Walls said
in a recent blog post. “But now $10
million is increasingly common and
individual claims are being seen as
large as $40 million.” +
BY: LARRY WICKS, CPCU, WORKERS’
COMPENSATION CLAIMS ADVOCATE,
SPECTRUM INSURANCE GROUP
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