The Bureau of Labor Statistics is a unit of the United States Department of Labor. It is the principal fact-finding agency for the U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics and serves as a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System.

This week it published the first in a series of two news releases from BLS covering occupational safety and health statistics for the 2017 calendar year.

A second release in December will provide results from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) of all fatal work injuries occurring in the U.S. during the calendar year. The CFOI uses diverse state, federal, and independent data sources to identify, verify, and describe fatal work injuries to ensure that counts are as complete and accurate as possible.

According to its report, there were approximately 2.8 million nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses reported by private industry employers in 2017, which occurred at a rate of 2.8 cases per 100 full-time equivalent (FTE) workers.

Private industry employers reported nearly 45,800 fewer nonfatal injury and illness cases in 2017 compared to a year earlier, according to estimates from the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII).

The 2017 rate of total recordable cases (TRC) fell 0.1 cases per 100 FTE workers to continue a pattern of declines that, apart from 2012, occurred annually since 2004.

– The rates for different types of cases – days away from work (DAFW), days of job transfer or restriction only (DJTR), and other recordable cases (ORC) – were unchanged from a year earlier.
– The rate for DJTR cases has remained at 0.7 cases per 100 FTE workers since 2011.
– Nearly one-third of nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses resulted in days away from work.
– Among the 19 private industry sectors, only manufacturing and finance and insurance experienced statistically significant changes in their overall rates of nonfatal injuries and illnesses in 2017 – each declined by 0.1 cases per 100 FTE workers compared to 2016.

There were 882,730 occupational injuries and illnesses in 2017 that resulted in days away from work in private industry, essentially unchanged from 2016. The private industry incidence rate for DAFW cases was 89.4 cases per 10,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) workers in 2017.

The median days away from work—a key measure of the severity of cases – was 8 in 2017, unchanged from 2016.