The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) annual report gets published every year since 1992 on Workers Memorial Day.
The 2024 edition, Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect details data that describes the state of workers in the United Sates of America.
In 2022, 5,486 workers were killed on the job in the United States and an estimated 120,000 workers died from occupational diseases. That means that 344 workers died each day from hazardous working conditions. And things are not getting better: The job fatality rate increased again to 3.7 per 100,000 workers.
Workers of colour die on the job at a higher rate: Black and Latino worker job fatality rates are disproportionately high compared with all other workers and are continuing to increase. Black workers’ job fatality rate was the highest it has been in nearly 15 years and the number and fatality rates of Latino workers climbed in 2022.
By way of comparison, Australian estimates are that approximately 200 workers are killed on the job every year, with an additional 5000 deaths attributed annually to occupational diseases and other causes.
Source: Confined Space, April 26