⁽¹⁾ CFOI has used several versions of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) since 2003 to define industry. For more information on the version of NAICS used in this year, see our definitions page at https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshcfdef.htm.

⁽²⁾ Workers under the age of 16 years, volunteer workers, and members of the resident military are not included in rate calculations to maintain consistency with the Current Population Survey (CPS) employment. The ownership category government is not presented separately and may be included in any industry category. In 2007, the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) adopted hours-based state fatal injury rates. Employment-based rates were used previously. Because of substantial differences between rates calculated using the two methods, hours-based state fatal injury rates should not be compared to the employment-based rates from previous years.
Note: Dashes indicate that a fatal injury rate was not calculated because the data did not meet publication criteria or there were no data reported.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, 2016.

Fatal injury rate computation

Fatal injury rates depict the risk of incurring a fatal occupational injury and can be used to compare risk among worker groups with varying employment levels. Since employment data are not collected by CFOI, fatal injury rates are calculated using CPS data. Each state rate in the table above represents the number of fatal occupational injuries per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers and was calculated as:

Fatality rate = (N_S/EH_S) x 200,000,000 where
      N_S = number of fatal work injuries in the state
      EH_S = total hours worked by all employees in the state during the calendar year
      200,000,000 = base for 100,000 equivalent full-time workers (working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year)

State rates by industry were imputed by using national-level "average hours"� and "at work"� information from CPS to calculate the average annual number of hours for each employee, since these data are not available at the state level. EH_S (total hours worked by all employees in the state during the calendar year) was calculated as:

EH_S = HW_N x E_S where
      E_S = State employment
      HW_N = average annual number of hours for each employee at the national level

Fatal injury rate limitations

State industry rates are not directly comparable to national industry rates. Because state rates include government workers in their respective industry and are not broken out separately, both the numerator and denominator include a different group of workers than that of the national rates. State industry rates are not comparable to other states because of the large differences in the industry composition of employment by state.

There are several limitations of using CPS data in CFOI rate calculations.

• State of residence versus state of incident: The CPS counts workers by their state of residence, whereas the CFOI counts workers by state of incident.
• Primary job versus job at the time of incident: The CPS annual average employment data used in the rate calculations count workers according to their primary job, whereas CFOI uses the job held when fatally injured.
• Employment sampling errors: The CPS data uses a sample of households, therefore the CPS estimates, and the fatal injury rates based on them, have sampling errors.