Processing Your Payment

Please do not leave this page until complete. This can take a few moments.

May 2, 2023

Travelers study finds first-year employee injuries make up one-third of cases

HBJ FILE PHOTO Hartford is home to many insurance and financial services companies, including property and casualty insurer Travelers Cos., whose downtown office building is shown above.
By Skyler Frazer

First-year employees make up more than one-third of workplace injury claims, according to Travelers Cos. 2023 Injury Impact Report.

Travelers, a property and casualty insurer with major operations in Hartford, this week released its annual report detailing workers compensation claims data from 2016 to 2020, finding that new employees had more injury claims than their counterparts on the job, and older employees had a higher average of costs per claim.

The study found that employees in their first year on a job represented 34% of all injury claims during the time period, accounting for almost 7 million missed workdays. Employees ages 60 and older had higher average costs per injury claim than younger people — almost 15% more than employees between 35 and 49 years old and about 140% more than those between 18 and 24 years old.

Those injured on the job miss an average of 71 workdays, Travelers said. The construction industry averaged the highest number of lost workdays per injury, 99, followed by transportation with 77 lost workdays.

According to the report, the most common injuries were strains and sprains at 38% and fractures at 13%. Overexertion caused the most claims at 29%, followed by slips, trips and falls at 23%, and being struck by an object at 13%.

For this year’s report, Travelers analyzed more than 1.2 million workers compensation claims the company received between 2016 and 2020 from a variety of industries and business sizes. All findings were based solely on indemnity claims, where the injured employees could not immediately return to work and incurred medical costs.

The full report is available online.

Sign up for Enews

Most Recent

Most Recent

0 Comments

Order a PDF