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Raw data: Occupational fatalities in 2021

In a desperate effort to avoid writing about Elon Musk on a day that's light on news, I present you instead with results of the annual BLS count of occupational deaths. Here's the total:

That's a 6% increase between 2020 and 2021, but 2020 was an outlier. Aside from that, occupational fatalities have been flat for the past five years.

As you'd expect, the fatality rate is far higher among men than women:

Here are the eight most dangerous occupations:

Hunting and fishing lost its #1 spot to logging. Note that both of these occupations have fatality rates around 800 per million, which makes them 20+ times more dangerous than the average occupation. I was a little surprised to see trash collection on this chart. It's a more dangerous occupation than I realized.

Finally, here are raw numbers for a bigger list of occupations. This is not per million,¹ so the biggest numbers tend to represent occupations with lots of workers.

On the other hand, there are some big occupations at the bottom of the list that are super safe. If you work with computers, you're about as safe as you can get as long as nobody is counting heart attacks from sitting and eating Doritos too much.

¹This is because, for whatever reason, BLS doesn't report it that way. I'm too lazy to look up employment numbers for each category, and I'm not sure I could match the categories perfectly anyway. This is the best we can do.

14 thoughts on “Raw data: Occupational fatalities in 2021

  1. MindGame

    Commercial piloting is more dangerous than truck driving? Now that seems pretty counter-intuitive to me. Or could this be a rounding error resulting from the large difference in numbers working in those two areas?. (At least, I presume there are a lot more truck drivers than pilots.)

    1. memyselfandi

      Flying Census is an order more dangerous than large commercial planes which is probably what you are thinking of. And helicopter pilots is an order more dangerous than the small planes.

    2. lawnorder

      If you say "commercial pilots" and think "big jets that carry hundreds of passengers" you will be rightly disbelieving. However, there are MANY small airplanes and helicopters that people are paid to pilot, and the accident rate among them is much, much higher than it is for the big planes.

  2. bluegreysun

    "...piloting is more dangerous than truck driving? Seems counter-intuitive to me..."

    Last I looked at this kinda info, "General Aviation" was more dangerous than expected. While big commercial airlines are very safe, much safer than driving on a per/mile basis, General Aviation (includes little private planes like Cessnas, but also small commercial single/dual propeller planes, all the way up to private jets, plus helicopters) is not more safe than driving. They crash every now and then.

  3. iamr4man

    In 2021 more law enforcement officers were killed by Covid than all other causes combined. Due, partially I’m sure, by their reluctance to get vaccinated or mask. But they will fight to get body armor.

  4. D_Ohrk_E1

    OT:

    You made contingency plans for the demise of Twitter, yet? Yesterday, Ars reported that Musk sold off another batch of Tesla stocks -- the third time since April when he claimed that he would not sell any more Tesla stocks to pay for the birdsite.

  5. kaleberg

    Logging and fishing are big things out where I live. Felling trees is amazingly dangerous especially since the ones you want to fell are the bigger ones. It's easy to get oneself killed if you misread the ground or the tree or countless other things. Fishing isn't much better since the best fishing is in cold water far out at sea on a small boat. I've spoken with boat owners and fishermen. In the winter, it gets insane with the decks and lines iced over, the boat tossing wildly and one's muscles stiffened by the cold. Both jobs still pay moderately well, so there are lots of takers.

    P.S. When I first saw "pilots", I thought of the guys who leap up to a cargo ship from a small boat or down from a cargo ship to a small boat which strikes me as a good way to get oneself dead. They guide boats in and guide boats out, but they have to transfer to a smaller boat since they aren't going on a long journey. Otherwise, small plane piloting is dangerous. I have friends who do it for fun, but they tend to fly on VFR days. The professionals get to explore their IFR envelope which is much more interesting and much more likely to kill one.

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