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SafetyBLS fatal injury rates, 2024

How to weigh crew hours by BLS fatal injury rates, from roofers at 48.7 to electricians at 5.3

A safety director can weight a firm's field hours by the Bureau of Labor Statistics fatal injury rate for each trade and get one blended rate for the whole payroll. In a worked example of 500,000 self-perform hours, laborers work 40% of the hours and carry 54.7% of the exposure.

Roofers
48.7
Construction industry
9.2
Electricians
5.3

Fatal work injuries per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers, 2024

A safety director who reports to the owner each year usually brings TRIR, DART and the experience mod. None of the three says much about the risk of a death on the job, because a firm's own fatality count is almost always zero. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes fatal injury rates by occupation, and a contractor can weight them by its own payroll hours to see which crews carry the most exposure.

The source is the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), a count of every fatal work injury in the US in a calendar year. BLS published the 2024 census on February 19, 2026. It recorded 5,070 fatal work injuries, down 4.0% from 5,283 in 2023, and an all-worker rate of 3.3 per 100,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) workers. Construction had 1,034 of those deaths and a rate of 9.2.

The formula

The rate divides deaths by hours worked and multiplies by 200,000,000

The BLS Handbook of Methods gives one formula. Divide the number of fatal injuries by the total hours the group worked in the year, then multiply by 200,000,000. That base stands for 100,000 full-time workers at 40 hours a week for 50 weeks, the same convention as the 200,000-hour base in the TRIR and DART post, scaled up a thousandfold.

Fatal injuriesHours worked × 200,000,000 = Rate per 100,000 FTE
1 fatality500,000 hours × 200,000,000 = 400

The hours come from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly household survey. BLS says hours-based rates are generally considered more accurate than rates built on headcount, because they measure risk per standard length of exposure. In 2024 construction workers logged 22.5 billion hours, about 7.6% of the 297.6 billion hours worked by all workers, and accounted for about 20% of fatal work injuries.

The formula also shows why a single contractor cannot compute a useful rate of its own. A firm with 500,000 hours a year that had one fatality would post a rate of 400 per 100,000 FTE. A firm with none would post zero. Neither number tells the owner much about next year, so the useful step is to apply the national rates to the firm's hours.

Rates by trade

Construction laborers logged 4.2 billion hours at a rate of 15.8

BLS publishes a rate for an occupation only when it had at least 5 fatal injuries and 40 million hours worked in the year. The chart and table show ten construction occupations from the 2024 file.

The margin of error is the range around the rate that BLS gives at 95% confidence. It comes from sampling error in the CPS hours, and it widens for small trades. Roofers, at 48.7 with a margin of 7.38, logged 400 million hours and had 104 fatal injuries. Structural iron and steel workers had 14 fatal injuries on 100 million hours, so their rate of 37.8 carries a margin of 13.35.

Construction laborers sit at 15.8 with a margin under 1 point, on 4.2 billion hours, the most of any trade in the table. A contractor with a large self-perform labor force will find that this row drives its weighted result.

Where construction deaths come from

Falls, slips and trips caused 389 of the 1,034 construction deaths

BLS also breaks the 1,034 construction deaths down by the event that caused them. Falls, slips and trips caused 389, or 37.6%. Transportation incidents caused 244, about 23.6%, and exposure to harmful substances or environments caused 187.

The mix changes by subsector. Falls caused 96 of 120 deaths at roofing contractors, or 80%. At heavy and civil contractors, transportation incidents caused 69 of 158, and highway, street and bridge work accounts for 36 of them. For a highway contractor, that points the safety plan toward work zones and haul routes.

A worked example

Laborers work 40% of the example hours and carry 54.7% of the exposure

The table below is an example with round numbers. A general contractor self-performs 500,000 field hours a year across five occupations. Each line multiplies the hours by the BLS 2024 rate for that occupation. The blended rate is the sum of those products divided by total hours.

Laborers work 40% of the hours and carry 54.7% of the weighted exposure. Electricians work 10% and carry 4.6%. The blended rate of 11.6 sits above the construction industry's 9.2, because this firm's hours lean toward laborers and supervisors.

Blended rate, example hours
11.6Construction industry, 2024: 9.2
Expected at national rates
0.029Fatal injuries a year, about one in 35 years

The same arithmetic turns the blended rate into an expected count at national rates. Divide the total of 5,775,000 by 200,000,000 and the result is 0.029 fatal injuries a year, about one in 35 years. That figure applies the national experience to this hour mix. The firm's own controls do not enter the calculation.

Subcontracted scopes can go through the same table. Twenty thousand roofing hours at 48.7 come to 974,000, more than three and a half times the electricians' line at 50,000 hours. Those hours sit on the roofing sub's payroll, and adding them to the table shows how much exposure the scope brings onto the site.

How to use it on your jobs

Any iron worker rate from about 24 to 51 fits the 2024 data

Pull last year's field hours from payroll by craft code, map each code to the closest BLS occupation, and build the table above. Use the margin of error column to decide how much weight a trade deserves. The iron worker rate of 37.8 has a margin of 13.35, so any value from about 24 to 51 fits the 2024 data.

Then put the shares next to where the safety budget goes. If laborers carry half the weighted exposure, check what share of site audits, job hazard analyses and training hours they get. Do the same for the event mix in your subsector, since a highway contractor and a roofer face different causes.

First stepTo start, take one active job, total its hours by craft from the last month of certified payroll, and run them through the BLS rates. The labor productivity post covers pulling hours by craft from timecards.

Limits of the rates

Construction and extraction deaths peaked at 1,056 in 2022

Occupation rates count workers in that occupation in every industry, so the laborer rate mixes building, highway and other work. CPS counts each worker by primary job, while CFOI records the job held at the time of the fatal injury. BLS notes that small counts swing from year to year, and that a single incident with several deaths can move a rate.

CFOI excludes deaths from illness unless an injury event set them off. BLS lists the 2020 to 2024 figures as revised and final. Construction and extraction occupations recorded 976 fatal injuries in 2020, a high of 1,056 in 2022 and 1,032 in 2024.