Fatalities and the changing distribution of business types in the United States

Abstract

AbstractAs businesses in the “Goods Producing” sector moved their operations outside of the United States over the last several decades, relatively higher accident rates went with them. The net result has been a trend towards business types, mostly in the “Service Providing” sector, which have historically lower accident rates. In this article, the author will show that a significant portion of the reductions in fatal occupational accidents over the 16‐year span from 1992 to 2008 in the United States were the result of business trends away from the “Goods Producing” sector towards the “Service Providing” sector. This is not to say that improvements in accident prevention policies and procedures were not a major contributor to reductions in fatal occupational accidents as well. Instead, these policy and program improvements were augmented by the changing distribution of business types in the United States. The net result was a reduction in overall fatal occupational accident rates of ∼ 43.5% with ∼ 23% of this reduction resulting from the changing distribution of business types in the United States. With the limited analysis demonstrated in this article, it is not possible to infer this same effect for other spans of time. It seems likely, however, that any span of years that sees a decrease in the percentage of hours worked in “Goods Producing” sector with a corresponding increase in the percentage of hours worked in “Service Providing” sector would have a decrease in total fatal accidents attributable only to the changing distribution of business types in the United States. © 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2010.