New statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that in 2023, 5,283 American workers died after suffering injuries while working. This was down by 3.7 percent from 2022. A worker died every 99 minutes from a work-related injury in 2023 compared to every 96 minutes in 2022. Fatalities due to violence and other injuries by persons or animals decreased from 849 in 2022 to 740 in 2023. Homicides accounted for 61.9 percent of these fatalities, with 458 deaths.
When we break down the figures by racial and ethnic group, we see that 659 African Americans died from work-related injuries in 2023. This was down by more than 10 percent from 2022. The number of Black Americans killed at work in 2022 was the highest number recorded since statistics on workplace fatalities have been collected. Black deaths from workplace injuries were up 12.4 percent in 2022 from 2021, after a huge increase of 20.7 percent from 2020 to 2021. The workplace fatality rate for Black workers in 2023 was 3.6 per 100,000 workers, down from 4.2 percent the year before. African Americans made up 12.5 percent of all work-related fatalities due to injury, down from 13.4 percent in 2022.
Transportation incidents were the highest cause of fatalities for Black or African American (261) workers in 2023. The private industry sector with the highest number of
Black or African American worker fatalities was transportation and warehousing (200).
