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U.S. States with the Most Workplace Fatalities

In which U.S. states are workers most likely to die as the result of workplace accident?
Rate = fatalities per 100,000 workers
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: November 11, 2019
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First submittedNovember 10, 2019
Times taken8,132
Average score60.0%
Rating3.98
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Rate
State
10.2
Alaska
10.1
North Dakota
7.7
Wyoming
7.4
West Virginia
7.3
South Dakota
Rate
State
7.0
Vermont
6.9
Montana
6.3
Louisiana
6.2
Mississippi
6.1
Arkansas
+19
Level ∞
Nov 11, 2019
People who work in "Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting" in Alaska have a 0.3% chance of dying on the job in any given year. Deadliest catch indeed.
+2
Level 69
Nov 11, 2019
I was going to speculate low-regulation states based on the list, but your explanation is probably the primary cause
+16
Level ∞
Nov 11, 2019
Yeah, it's less about regulation than it is about industry type. A few industries cause the vast majority of workplace fatalities: Farming, fishing, logging, construction, mining, oil extraction, transportation, and law enforcement. On the other hand, almost no one ever dies working in an office.
+4
Level 87
Nov 11, 2019
I don't believe that. Then states that are big on logging, fishing, etc. like Oregon, Washington, Colorado, etc. would be on here. I think that it is the combination of dangerous workplaces and consistently voting against regulation that does it.
+21
Level 88
Nov 11, 2019
Oregon and Washington have a high concentration of people living in urban areas. Nobody gets up in Seattle-Tacoma every morning and heads outside to start cutting wood inside from their air-conditioned skidder. Logging's not what it used to be....
+2
Level 69
Nov 12, 2019
FYI, mf3 – Colorado is not big on logging or fishing. In logging, we are around the middle of the pack, and fishing is non-existent on an industrial scale, since there’s not very much water! We’re also mid-range in the overall regulatory department too, but in the environmentally-impactful industries to which you’re referring, Colorado’s pretty darn regulated. (N.B. Mining’s been gone for quite some time, too.)
+5
Level 74
Nov 14, 2019
Union membership affects these figures as well: advocating for safer working conditions, breaks that keep workers rested, etc.
+2
Level 85
Feb 20, 2020
somehow people can even inject politics into this quiz. You people place way too much importance on it.
+1
Level 74
Nov 11, 2019
It is partly that, but it also partly the cumulative numbers across various professions. Some (mostly highly regulated) eastern states (VA, MD, MA, NJ) have relatively high numbers in agriculture, forestry, etc.--higher than some of the states that top this list--but rank low in other categories. For example, MA has a 40% rate in agriculture etc. but a very low rate in transportation/utilities. North Dakota, 2nd on this list, has only a 16.8% rate in agriculture, but scores high in mining and construction and transportation, most of which have very low fatalities in MA.
+1
Level 75
Feb 21, 2020
I come from a farm family and I know several people who have died in farming accidents - one died when a tractor turned over on him, another died when trying to jumpstart a tractor while in gear, another died while welding a trailer and the jack failed, dropping it on him, two men died in separate accidents when they climbed to the tops of their grain bins and tried to stomp down caked grain so it could be loaded out with an augur - the grain had an open pocket below and the crust gave way, dropping them through the grain and they suffocated. One of my friends died when she was helping her husband load out grain and the edge of her coat caught in the augur, twirling her violently around and around against the ground. My friend's father died while working on his combine, and he accidently got caught in a belt and was pulled into the machine while it was running. My own brother fell off a tractor and was run over when he was young, but luckily he wasn't hurt.
+2
Level 75
Feb 21, 2020
I was riding on the planter behind the tractor when my brother ran over a stob and it slashed the large back tire. They are filled with fluid and the scalding fluid poured out on me. Thankfully it wasn't serious. My cousin tried to jump on the back of a tractor and fell under the disk, but he wasn't hurt too badly. My nephew was driving our tractor down the road and the disk began swinging behind him. He lost control and the tractor went up a tree and fell over backward. Luckily he was able to jump off first. My brothers escaped serious injury when a field road bridge over a bayou fell in when they tried to drive over it with a loaded grain truck. Accidents are part of farm life - usually they're caused by carelessness when people are in a hurry and trying to take shortcuts, but sometimes they just happen and no one's at fault.
+1
Level 75
Feb 21, 2020
Two accidents stand out in my memory. My mom's best friend was helping her husband try to start their cranky Oliver tractor. He asked her to check to see if there was gas in the tank. She couldn't see so she struck a match to better see...luckily her hair soon grew back. One of my teachers was trying to take a sample of bull semen for research - bulls don't always appreciate "manual extraction" - and somehow he got semen in his eye. It is caustic and he had to go to the doctor. His eye was eventually okay, but he was the object of many jokes forever after. I knew another man who was using his four wheeler to herd cattle into a pen. The bull resisted so he bumped him with the four-wheeler. The bull turned around, put his head under the front, and flipped the four-wheeler completely over. The man was in the hospital with broken ribs, a punctured lung, and other injuries. My son went to the doctor with a cut hand when my husband ran over a piece of metal while bushhogging the pasture.
+2
Level 75
Feb 21, 2020
I took a very long way of saying that farming is a very dangerous occupation, mostly because of all the machinery or large animals involved. We once had to take an employee to the hospital while hauling hay - we didn't know there was a bumblebee nest in the barn until we started stacking hay and one flew out and stung him. He hadn't known he was allergic to them but it turned out to be very serious. My husband has been injured when jacks fell while working on machinery, he's been hurt when cattle penned him against a panel, he's been kicked many times by animals, he cut his hand on tin while working on a barn roof, the list goes on and on. It's the same for every farm family I know.
+2
Level 67
Nov 12, 2019
I'm guessing this doesn't include traffic fatalities from people who drive drive for a living: truck drivers, salespeople, etc
+3
Level 84
Nov 13, 2019
But this is state level data, not national. Truck driver traffic fatalities, while sadly all too common and high, are going to dispersed much more evenly across states. This data is really showing that certain states have a heavier presence of dangerous professions, those that are even more dangerous than driving. This is a good article for context: https://www.trucks.com/2017/12/26/trucking-deadliest-jobs/
+4
Level ∞
Feb 20, 2020
I am pretty sure that it does include traffic fatalities of people who drive for work. Probably not commuting deaths though.
+10
Level 82
Feb 20, 2020
I assume these are all the states with the highest rates of female employment since we all know how privileged men are.
+10
Level 88
Feb 20, 2020
Great to see your input once again. I wouldn't be surprised if you could use the 'name every pokemon quiz' to somehow connect back to your misogynistic and other belligerent opinions.
+10
Level 63
Feb 20, 2020
Kal may be extremely obnoxious, but he isn't wrong here. It's very well-established fact that men are much more likely to die in workplace fatalities than are women.

Facts that counter your feminist narrative aren't "misogynistic". Unless you think reality is a bigot, which given the rate at which charges of prejudice are thrown around these days, could very well be your actual belief.

+1
Level 83
Sep 28, 2023
they're more likely to die because there are some jobs that are still agressively 'masculine' and tend to exclude or discourage women even though there is no legal discrimination
+4
Level 77
Feb 20, 2020
Right, because as we know men are literally rounded up and forced to work dangerous jobs.
+2
Level 49
May 14, 2021
Dude shut up
+1
Level 72
Feb 20, 2020
Vermont? I live in VT, and I never hear about anyone being killed on the job here. It was much worse when I lived/worked in Indiana, but maybe it was just the company for which I worked (they had one of the worst safety records in the state). Looking at the source material, All of that data is from "Leisure and Hospitality" ... ?! What?
+1
Level 80
Feb 20, 2020
Skiing accidents?
+1
Level 59
Feb 21, 2020
It's because it's percentage based. If your state only has 100,000 people then 1 death is the same percentage as 100 deaths in a state with 10,000,000.
+1
Level 65
Oct 22, 2020
Probably deaths from accidental tree-cutting mistakes
+1
Level 72
Feb 24, 2021
Looks like 2017 was just a really bad year, according to BLS - 2014 - 10 deaths, 2015 - 9 deaths, 2016 - 10 deaths, 2018 - 11 deaths, 2019 - 10 deaths. The hospitality deaths in 2017 were all associated with "transportation accidents," so, maybe there was some sort of multiple-car pile-up or something. I don't recall hearing anything in the news, but fatal crashes are shockingly common here. BLS also states that three of the deaths were "violence by other persons or animals," which is unusual as well, since our state is pretty quiet and peaceful, generally.
+1
Level 56
Feb 20, 2020
These are states by the highest fatality rate, not the highest number of fatalities. What you see here is some high-risk industrties in fairly small populations. The low number of workers drives the rate up.
+2
Level 72
Mar 1, 2021
It might be better if the quiz made it clear that the data is from a singular year. The biggest surprise answer for everybody (based on the comments) is on the list due to an outlying data point from the selection of the year whence the data came. If the data came from a different year or an average of multiple years, this surprise answer wouldn't be included.