Safework Australia new report - Analysis of ABS work-related injuries data

Safe Work Australia (SWA) has published a new report on work-related injuries. The report builds on survey data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) by exploring the links with SWA’s National dataset for compensation-based statistics and findings from the Safer, healthier, wealthier research.

The report delves deeper into the ABS data to unpack trends over time, identify and describe important findings beyond the key figures on the ABS website, and provide a more complete picture of work-related injuries that occur in the labour market.

Key findings from the report include:

• In 2021-22, 497,300 (3.5%) of the working population experienced a work-related injury or illness, down from 4.2% in 2017-18.
• The overall work-related injury rate was 35.3 injuries per 1000 people who worked in the past 12 months.
• For workers who experienced a work-related injury or illness in 2021-22, 31% received workers compensation for the injury or illness, an increase from 27% in 2017-18.
• Safe Work Australia data shows that serious workers’ compensation claims in 2020-21 resulted in a total loss of 1.9 million weeks of work.

You can find more detail in the report, Analysis of ABS work-related injuries survey data 2021-22.