Time Lost for Serious Workers' Compensation Claims on the Rise

The median time lost for a serious workers’ compensation claim in Australia is now 6.2 weeks – an increase of 24 percent since 2009, according to the latest Safe Work Australia statistics.

However, in the same period, the frequency rate of serious claims per million hours worked has decreased by 26 percent.

The Australian Workers’ Compensation Statistics (AWCS) report provides detailed statistics about workers’ compensation claims that were lodged in Australia between 2000-01 and 2018-19, including preliminary data for 2018-19 and trend analysis to 2017-18.

The statistics provide an indication of Australia’s work health and safety performance and include data broken down by gender, age, occupation, industry, nature of injury or disease, mechanism of injury or disease, and bodily location of the injury or disease.

Key findings in 2018-19 include:

• There was a total of 114,435 serious workers’ compensation claims.
• The 3 occupations with the highest rate of serious claims (per million hours worked) were: labourers; community and personal service workers; and machinery operators and drivers.
• The 3 industries with the highest rate of serious claims (per million hours worked) were: agriculture, forestry and fishing; manufacturing; and transport, postal and warehousing.
• The 3 most common injury types were: traumatic joint/ligament and muscle/tendon injuries (39% of all serious claims); wounds, lacerations, amputations and internal organ damage (16%); and musculoskeletal and connective tissue diseases (16%).