Posted with permission from Confined Space, a newsletter of workplace safety and labor issues.
In the unlikely event that anyone out there was thinking that workplace fatalities were fading into the past, check out the newest Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries that was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today. According to BLS, 5,190 fatal work injuries occurred on the job in 2016, a 7-percent increase from the 4,836 fatal injuries reported in 2015 and the third year in a row the number has increased. We’re now looking at more than 14 workers dying every day on the the job in the United States. This is the highest fatality rate since 2010.