Wrangling Workplace Fatality Numbers: Data Woes And Wins

Workplace fatality data, specifically the data that goes into calculating workplace fatality rates, is quite possibly the most unruly data Inside Energy has wrangled yet. Not because it’s hard, but because it’s nearly impossible to capture the full story of how dangerous the oil and gas industry is at a local level. Here are some of the biggest challenges involved in analyzing workplace fatality data.

Oil And Gas Worker Fatalities Down In 2013

In 2013, 4,405 Americans died from workplace injuries, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And 112 – or 2.5 percent – of them worked in the oil and gas industry in jobs like drilling and servicing wells, operating equipment, and machining parts. This represents a decrease in fatalities from last year, when 142 oil and gas workers died. In the past decade, fatalities have risen along with the oil and gas boom in the U.S.:

But in 2013, the number of fatalities decreased, even though the number of oil and gas workers continued to grow. And, with the exception of 2009 when the boom slowed due to the recession, 2013 represents the lowest fatality rate (deaths per 100,000 workers) in the past decade:

How does oil and gas compare to other industries?