The National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) released a report looking at changing demographics in the workplace and how that demographic swing might have impacted worker injuries.

Claim frequency has been declining, falling almost every year for the past twenty years and by almost one-third between 2006 and 2017. The share of workers aged 55 and older has increased by one-third over this period, the share of female employment has increased slightly to comprise 47% of the workforce, and employment growth has been concentrated in service sectors.

They found that younger workers have lower injury frequency than older workers and have fewer contact injuries and falls/slips/trips. NCCI did not determine that sector mix played a factor in why injury frequency has declined for younger workers but workers between the ages of 25 and 34, who have historically suffered more injuries than other age groups, saw incident rates decline by almost 50 percent between 2006 and 2017.

Men have higher injury frequency than women, but that gap is shrinking. The incident rate among men was reported as 95 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers in 2017, a drop from 142 per 100,000 FTE in 2016. The women’s incident rate in 2017 was 82 down from 106 in 2006. Men tend to work in sectors that have high contact injury rates but most of the gender gap in injury frequency cannot be attributed directly to sector mix.

Sectors like construction and manufacturing have higher injury frequency rates than service sectors, though frequency in all sectors have declined.

NCCI determined that injury frequency decline is mostly the result of a decline across all workers and industries, and not a result of demographic shifts in the workplace. Increased amounts of women and service sector workers have pushed frequency down a little bit. The aging workforce had little effect on the decline in frequency.

Read the full report from NCCI here.