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Forestry is still among most dangerous industries

If you work in agriculture, forestry and fishing, then you’re working in Australia’s most dangerous industry, a study has found. Source: Sydney Morning Herald

A recent analysis by Finder Insights (https://www.finder.com.au/insights) has found agriculture, forestry and fishing the most hazardous industry for the third year in a row, with 44 fatalities and 3510 serious injuries in 2016 alone.

The most common cause of injury being sheep, beef cattle and grain farming. The analysis of the latest Safe Work Australia data scaled compensation claims for serious industries against fatalities per industry.

Transport, postal and warehousing is the second-most dangerous industry, followed by construction.

At the other end of the spectrum, financial and insurance services is the safest industry with only 620 serious injuries and no fatalities in 2016.

Finder Insights Manager Graham Cooke said it was important to take both compensation claims and fatalities into account when looking at the most dangerous industries as they are indicative of the risk involved.

“Although other industries may have more of a reputation, agriculture, forestry and fishing saw the highest proportion of fatalities and compensation claims in 2016, for the third year running,” Mr Cooke said.

However, he said it was not all bad news as the number of fatalities had gone down by 41% since 2007.

“Workers’ compensation won’t typically cover sole traders or contractors, so it’s important to consider income protection as an additional safety net,” he said.

A spokesperson from Safe Work Australia said: “while the industries ranked at the top continue to have high rates of fatalities and injuries, it should be noted that the number and rate of fatalities and injuries have broadly been trending down across all industries over the last 10 years.”

Electricity, gas, water and waste services industry has jumped from 9th position in 2015 to 5th for 2016 on the list of most dangerous industries.

Mining has dropped to 7th down from number six last year. 

The top three industries accounted for 69% of all fatalities. The health and community services industry once again had the highest number of worker compensation claims in 2015-2016, with 16,175 claims being lodged.

The reason this industry doesn’t rank higher is because of the large amount of people that were employed that year (roughly 1,511,682).

Research link:  https://www.finder.com.au/most-dangerous-jobs-australia