Abstract
During 2000-2016, the suicide rate among the U.S. working age population (persons aged 16-64 years) increased 34%, from 12.9 per 100,000 population to 17.3 (https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars). To better understand suicide among different occupational groups and inform suicide prevention efforts, CDC analyzed suicide deaths by Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) major groups for decedents aged 16-64 years from the 17 states participating in both the 2012 and 2015 National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) (https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nvdrs). The occupational group with the highest male suicide rate in 2012 and 2015 was Construction and Extraction (43.6 and 53.2 per 100,000 civilian noninstitutionalized working persons, respectively), whereas the group with the highest female suicide rate was Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media (11.7 [2012] and 15.6 [2015]). The largest suicide rate increase among males from 2012 to 2015 (47%) occurred in the Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media occupational group (26.9 to 39.7) and among females, in the Food Preparation and Serving Related group, from 6.1 to 9.4 (54%). CDC's technical package of strategies to prevent suicide is a resource for communities, including workplace settings (1).
Highlights
What is already known about this topic?
From 2000 to 2016, the U.S. suicide rate among working aged (16–64 years) adults increased 34% from 12.9 per 100,000 population to 17.3
Further workplace prevention resources are available at https://theactionalliance.org/, and help is available at 1-800-273-TALK
Summary
Assignment of occupation code Assigned based on decedent usual lifetime occupation Autocoded by NIOCCS Manually reassigned using the NIOCCS computerassisted feature Manually assigned using the NIOCCS computerassisted feature Rate analysis Decedents presumed to be in the labor force at time of death§. § Because annual U.S population count data by occupational group reflects the longest held job in the previous year among civilian, noninstitutionalized persons, suicide decedents whose NVDRS data from coroner/medical examiner or law enforcement reports indicated no employment (e.g., retired, unemployed, disabled, incarcerated, home maker, or student) at the time of death were excluded from rate analysis. A subgroup of the SOC 11 Management major group) were 44.9 (CI = 34.2–57.9) and 32.2 (CI = 24.2–42.0) per 100,000, based on 59 and 54 suicides in 2012 and 2015, respectively.
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