Is changing workforce behind decrease in workers comp claims?
A new study by the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) to determine if demographic changes are behind the continuing decline in workers compensation (WC) claims has yielded some surprising results. Among them: that the aging of the U.S. workforce is not a factor.
According to NCCI, WC claims have fallen by nearly one-third in the last ten years, part of a trend that’s been going on for more than two decades. At the same time, the number of workers who are at least 55 years old has doubled since 2000, while the number of workers under 55 has been stable. Given the increasing percentage of women in the labor force (now at 47 percent) and the share of the labor force working in the service sector, NCII set out to investigate the relationship between changing workforce demographics and workers compensation frequency.