If you work at a desk job these days, you may be risking a lifestyle that is far too sedentary for your own longevity. The elevator-serviced amenities of the modern office mean we’re getting less exercise. Match that with our breakneck pace workaday schedules,  fast food lunches and a stressful commute to and from the workplace. These factors challenge even  today’s office worker to safeguard their physical fitness as well as their fiscal fitness on the job.

Still,  there are far more dangerous jobs than office work. There high-risk occupations represent a real threat to life and limb, and make it tougher to get life insurance with or without a medical exam.

The U.S. Department of Labor has revealed data that demonstrates how fishermen (and fisherwomen) along with other workers in fishing-related professions were the most likely to die on the job in 2008. Of 39,000 fishing workers in the nation, 50 were killed, a rate of 128.9 per 100,000 full-time workers. Rough seas, unpredictable deadly weather and isolation during emergencies all make the job more unsafe than any other. The perils of netting a job in the fishing industry have even been dramatized on the small and large movie screens, like the popular documentary TV series, Deadliest Catch, and the Hollywood blockbuster, The Perfect Storm.

Logging workers and aircraft pilots have the second and third deadliest jobs. Eighty-two loggers died last year from work injuries, according to the Lavor Board. Ninety aircraft pilots died in crashes and other accidents.

Transportation incidents are the most common cause of fatalities, overall. This year, 40.5% of the worker deaths, 2,053 of them, were transportation-related. More than half were highway incidents, which have been the most common killer every year since the Labor Department started tracking workplace fatalities in 1992. Equipment- and objects-related injuries came in a distant second, accounting for 923 fatalities, or 18.2%.

“While putting in 57% of the total hours worked by Americans, men made up 92.7% of the workplace fatalities. The relatively few women killed were more likely to die from on-the-job homicide, though: 26% of the female workplace deaths were murders, compared with only 9% of the male deaths,” according to the department. “For several occupations with high fatality rates, including truck drivers and farmers, and several industries with high fatality rates, like construction and mining, men constitute a much larger part of the total employment, In addition, women are often employed in occupations and industries, like trade and leisure/hospitality, where homicides are more prevalent.”

The construction industry suffered the largest number of deaths. Its fatality rate per 100,000 full-time workers was only 9.6, less than a 10th of that of people in fishing, but that added up to 969 deaths in 2008, no less than 19.1% of all U.S. workplace fatalities.

What about those who work in Wall Street finance? People in finance and insurance actually had the lowest fatality rate of any occupation — 0.3 deaths per 100,000 full-time workers, or just 24 people across the nation. Good thing they aren’t jumping from buildings like during the stock market crash of the 1920’s.  Not without life insurance!

Related posts

• No related posts.