Liberty Mutual released their 2018 Workplace Safety Index which ranks the top 10 causes of serious, nonfatal workplace injuries with the goal of bringing awareness to workplaces so that businesses can better identify risk areas and allocate safety resources. The order of the top ten causes of serious workplace injuries remained unchanged between 2017 and 2018.

The top cause of a disabling injury was overexertion involving outside sources, which accounted for $13.7 billion in direct workers’ compensation costs, or 23.4 percent of overall costs. These injuries are those related to lifting, pushing, pulling, holding, carrying or throwing objects. Following overexertion was falls on the same level, with direct costs of $11.23 billion and 19.2 percent of overall costs. Third was falls to a lower level and accounted for 10 percent of the burden and $5.85 billion in costs. Fourth was struck by an object or equipment, accounting for $5.33 billion and making up 9.1 percent of overall costs. In fifth was other exertions or bodily reactions, accounting for $4.19 billion and 7.2 percent of total cost injury burden. The top five most disabling workplace injuries accounted for 68.9 percent of total costs. In total, the top ten most injuries cost $51.44 billion, making up 87.9 percent of all costs, and the direct costs from all disabling work-related injuries equaled $58.5 billion.

Other injury causes making the list were roadway incidents involving motorized land vehicle, slip or trip without fall, caught in or compressed by equipment or objects, struck against object or equipment, or repetitive motions involving microtasks.

The number of serious workplace injuries and illnesses decreased by 1.5 percent but their cost (medical and lost-wages) increased by 2.9 percent between 2017 and 2018. The data from the study comes from Liberty Mutual, The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the National Academy of Social Insurance. Liberty Mutual identified events which caused employees to miss six or more days of work, and ranked them according to total workers’ compensation costs.

Read the full report from Liberty Mutual here.