Nonfatal work-related injuries treated in hospital emergency departments in the U.S., 2012-2023

Work-related injury surveillance is an important mechanism to measure occupational injuries and exposures. Although there is no single source of nonfatal occupational injury surveillance data, the Occupational Supplement to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS-Work) has been used for many years. Calendar year 2023 was the final year of data collection for NEISS-Work. This paper provides an overview of NEISS-Work data from 2012 to 2023 and compares the earliest year of results (1998) to the final year (2023).

Nonfatal workplace injuries treated in U.S. emergency departments (EDs) were analyzed using data from NEISS-Work. Data from the U.S. Current Population Survey were used as denominators in the calculation of rates per full-time equivalents (FTE).

From 2012 to 2023, an estimated 29 million (±5.3 million) work-related injuries were treated in hospital EDs, resulting in a rate of 163 ED-treated injuries per 10,000 FTE. Male workers incurred 65% of the total injuries. Workers aged 15-19 years had the highest injury rate of 330 per 10,000 FTE. Contact with objects and equipment; overexertion/bodily reaction; and falls, slips, and trips combined represented 75% of worker injuries treated in EDs. Workplace violence events were the only injury category that increased over this period.

Findings from this study suggest that nonfatal work-related injuries have decreased. The drivers of this decrease are unclear and may include improvements in workplace safety or lingering effects of the pandemic.

NEISS-Work data have played a critical role in the surveillance of nonfatal occupational injuries in the United States for 25 years. NEISS-Work data are no longer collected. Future surveillance efforts may begin identifying other sources of nonfatal occupational injury data that complement existing resources.