Construction industry work safety statistics highlighted
The construction industry continues to have one of the state's highest fatality and injury rates, with a new data hub confirming the industry has a higher than average workers' compensation claims rate.
Construction joins manufacturing; transport, postal and warehousing; agriculture, forestry and fishing; and the wholesale trade in the worst performing industry index. The construction industry recorded the highest average index value of 238 (or 2.38 times the all industry average), while also holding the second largest number of claims after manufacturing (13 per cent of all claims).
A large proportion (75 per cent) of the construction industry comprised high risk industry sub sectors. The good news is the rate of serious injury continues to fall, although the improvement was not as pronounced as in other industries.
The data hub's information can be screened industry by industry or across the state's regions, offering comparisons on work safety statistics, costs and injuries and fatalities by occupation and age grouping. The locality profiles use a snapshot of work health and safety and workers' compensation data to build a comparative picture of the state of workplace safety in Brisbane, Toowoomba, Ipswich, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, as well as the main regional centres of North and Central Queensland.
The new data hub, published by Workplace Health and Safety Queensland, features historical data, workers' compensation statistics, and national comparisons for industries and occupations. Labouring in the construction industry remains a high incident occupation.
The hub also comes with a Work Health and Safety eTools function that can assist businesses to develop effective hazard risk controls and estimate an indicative return on their investments in work health and safety.
A harm index combines workers' compensation claim numbers and the costs of serious workplace incidents to produce a visual representation, broken down by industry or occupation, of the relative harm workers are likely to sustain during their working lives. The index is a ratio of total statutory costs (an indicator of severity) to the exposure (all persons employed) risk and can be used to show where interventions are most needed.
Access the data hub at worksafe.qld.gov.au/resources/statistics.