Workplace injury claims

Relevance

Safety at work is an important contributor to wellbeing and the risk of work-related accidents or illness can be seen as one component of the quality of work. The best currently available measure of the incidence of workplace injuries comes from the database of claims made to the ACC.

Current level and trends

Provisional data for the 2007 calendar year shows 231,300 work-related injury claims had been reported to the ACC by 31 March 2008. This represents a rate of 122 claims per 1,000 full-time equivalent employees (FTEs), lower than the provisional rate for 2006 based on claims reported by 31 March 2007 (126 per 1,000 FTEs).

Using final data for the years 2001 to 2006, the injury claim rate declined from 144⁶⁰ per 1,000 to 128 per 1,000 FTEs.

Eighty-four per cent of all claims were for employees and for people who employed others in their own business. The injury claim rate for the self-employed not employing others was much higher than for the rest of the workforce (183 per 1,000 FTEs compared with 115 per 1,000 FTEs).

Injury claims for 2007 reported by March 2008 included 67 work-related fatalities. This is likely to be an underestimation of the final number of fatalities, because some workers may have died later from injuries received in the period. For example, the number of claims for fatal injuries inflicted in 2006 that were recorded by March 2007 was 81; the final number of fatal injury claims for 2006 was 103. Moreover, not all fatal work-related accidents result in a claim to the ACC.

Figure PW4.1 Estimated injury claim rate per 1,000 full-time equivalent employees, by sex, 2001–2007

Source: Statistics New Zealand (2008d)
Note: 2007 data is provisional and subject to change

Age and sex differences

Provisional data for 2007 shows that males were around twice as likely as females to suffer workplace injuries involving a claim to the ACC (154 per 1,000 FTEs for males compared with 79 per 1,000 FTEs for females). This reflects in part a male predominance in relatively dangerous occupations (eg elementary occupations, agriculture and fishing, and plant and machine operating and assembly, where the injury claim rates were 279, 247 and 229 per 1,000 FTEs respectively in 2007).

Although workers aged 65 years and over made only 4 per cent of injury claims, they had the highest injury incidence rate of 177 claims per 1,000 FTEs. The next highest injury incidence rate was recorded for those aged under 25 years (150 per 1,000 FTEs). Age differences in injury claim rates for females were less pronounced than those for males.

Figure PW4.2 Estimated injury claim rate per 1,000 full-time equivalent employees, by age and sex, 2007

Source: Statistics New Zealand (2008d)
Note: 2007 data is provisional and subject to change

Ethnic differences

Workplace injury claim rates are higher for Māori and Pacific peoples than for other ethnic groups (155 per 1,000 FTEs and 152 per 1,000 FTEs respectively in 2007). This reflects their over-representation in more dangerous occupations. In 2007, the injury claim rate for the Other ethnic group (including Asian) was 121 per 1,000 FTEs. The European ethnic group, which accounts for 75 per cent of all FTEs, had the lowest injury claim rate (111 per 1,000 FTEs).

Table PW4.1 Workplace injury claims, by ethnicity, 2007

Source: Statistics New Zealand (2008d) Table 2
Notes: (1) Data is provisional. (2) Total includes ethnicity not specified

Industry differences

The agriculture, forestry and fishing industry group had the highest injury claim rate in 2007, with 150 claims per 1,000 FTEs. There were also relatively high rates in the manufacturing industry (149 claims per 1,000) and the construction industry (141 per 1,000 FTEs). These three industries account for almost half (49 per cent) of all industry-specified injury claims. The lowest injury claim rate was for people working in finance and insurance (18 per 1,000 FTEs).

In 2007, the work-related fatality rate was highest for the construction industry (9 per 1,000 FTEs) followed by transport and storage (7 per 1,000 FTEs).

Regional differences

The highest work-related injury claim rates in 2007 were in Gisborne/Hawke’s Bay, Otago/Southland and the Bay of Plenty (180, 160 and 157 claims per 1,000 FTEs, respectively). Wellington and Auckland had the lowest injury claim rates per 1,000 FTEs (69 and 105, respectively). The variation between figures largely reflects the main industries and occupations in these regions. Auckland, despite its relatively low injury claim rate, had the highest overall number of injury claims at 63,300.

» View technical details about the workplace injury claims indicator