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Percent of Nonfatal Occupational Injuries and Illnesses Involving Days Away from Work by Day of Week Injury or Illness Occurred and Selected Occupations, 2002
by Lawrence H. Leith
Bureau of Labor Statistics

Originally Posted: February 23, 2005

Percent of Nonfatal Occupational Injuries and Illnesses Involving Days Away from Work by Day of Week Injury or Illness Occurred and Selected Occupations, 2002
Day of week Private in-dustry(1) Truck drivers Nursing aides, orderlies, and atten-dants Laborers, non-con-struction Janitors and clean-ers Con-struction laborers Assem-blers Car-penters Super-visors and pro-prietors, sales Cooks Sales workers, other com-modities

Total number (thousands)

 1,436.2 112.2 79.0 76.6 42.0 41.9 34.4 28.3 26.1 24.7 24.7

Total percent

 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Sunday

 5.5 2.9 10.3 4.6 6.2 1.0 1.5 2.1 6.5 14.2 7.3

Monday

 18.7 20.8 15.7 19.8 19.8 22.2 20.3 23.0 17.2 12.6 15.8

Tuesday

 18.1 18.6 18.7 18.5 17.1 22.2 21.5 19.1 15.7 12.6 15.4

Wednesday

 17.7 16.8 15.2 18.4 18.1 18.6 20.3 20.8 16.9 11.7 15.0

Thursday

 16.7 17.4 13.4 17.2 16.0 18.9 18.0 18.7 16.1 17.4 17.4

Friday

 16.0 17.6 14.3 17.0 17.1 13.6 14.2 13.8 16.9 19.8 17.4

Saturday

 7.3 6.1 12.5 4.6 6.0 3.6 4.1 2.5 10.7 11.7 11.7
Footnote:

Footnotes:
(1) Excludes farms with fewer than 11 employees. Total number for private industry includes all occupations.

Note: Days away from work include those that result in days away from work with or without job transfer or restriction. Due to rounding, percent data may not sum to exactly 100 percent.

 

  • Beginning in January 2002, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) implemented new recordkeeping rules regarding occupational injuries and illnesses. As a result of these changes, the BLS Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses now provides data on the time and day of the week of the injury or illness, as well as the number of hours on the job prior to its occurrence.


  • The table shows the 10 occupations with the greatest number of injuries and illnesses involving days away from work in 2002--these 10 occupations accounted for one-third of all such cases. Truck drivers, janitors and cleaners, and carpenters were somewhat more likely to sustain a lost-worktime injury or illness on Mondays than on other days. Among cooks and sales workers, such incidents were more likely to occur on Thursdays and Fridays.


  • The 10 occupations shown in this table experienced more lost-worktime cases during the hours from 8 a.m. to noon than during any other 4-hour period. Although most of these occupations experienced fewer incidents during the hours from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., cooks showed a noticeable increase during this period. About a fifth of the injuries and illnesses sustained by nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants occurred between midnight and 8 a.m., reflecting the 24-hour nature of their work.

Note: For more information on these new data, see the news release Time of Lost-Workday Injuries and Illnesses, 2002--First Results Announced by BLS (USDL 04-2407), available on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/os/osnr0020.pdf. BLS will report these data for subsequent years in the annual news release Lost-Worktime Injuries and Illnesses: Characteristics and Resulting Days Away From Work; the next issue of this news release is due out in March 2005.

 

Lawrence H. Leith
Economist, Office of Publications and Special Studies, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Telephone: (202) 691-7922; E-mail: Leith.Lawrence@bls.gov