April 12, 2000 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Robbery by far the most common motive for work-related homicides
Homicides accounted
for 709 (12 percent) of the 6,026 fatal work-related injuries in 1998.
[Chart data—TXT]
While many may assume that most work-related homicides are crimes of
passion or anger, committed by disgruntled coworkers, spouses, or
acquaintances, this is not the case. Of the 428 homicide cases in 1998
where the victim-perpetrator association could be identified, fully
two-thirds involved robbery.
Coworkers and former coworkers accounted for 15 percent
of identifiable cases of workplace homicide, acquaintances for 7 percent,
and relatives for 4 percent. Together, these three categories accounted
for barely a quarter of the total.
Data on workplace fatalities are from the BLS Safety
and Health Statistics program. To
learn more about work-related fatalities, see "Work-related
Homicides: The Facts" (PDF
76K), by Eric Sygnatur and Guy A. Toscano, Compensation
and Working Conditions, Spring 2000.
Numbers in chart do not add to 100 percent due to rounding.
Of interest
Spotlight on Statistics: National Hispanic Heritage Month
In this Spotlight, we take a look at the Hispanic labor force—including labor force participation, employment and unemployment, educational attainment, geographic location, country of birth, earnings, consumer expenditures, time use, workplace injuries, and employment projections.
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Read more »
