Female employees twice as likely to claim for mental stress, new Safe Work data shows

Serious workers compensation claims for mental stress are twice as high for women than for men, a statistic of note from the recently released Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2023 report, which reveals a national snapshot of work health and safety in Australia.

This statistic will be of particular note to employers in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector, a sector which is dominated by women, who make up 97 per cent of the workforce. 

The Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2023 report reveals a national snapshot of work health and safety in Australia, and confirms that overall, the number and rate of fatalities has been trending downward since 2007.

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“While the trends are encouraging, the statistics are still too high,” said Safe Work Australia CEO, Michelle Baxter.

“There’s a lot more work to be done to ensure that everyone gets home safely. We know that work-related fatalities, injuries and disease have a devastating impact on workers and their families.”

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The report is a high-level overview of national statistics on work-related fatalities, injuries and disease in Australia, and shows that: 

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• The traumatic injury fatality rate for workers in Australia has decreased by 30 per cent since 2012

• There were 127,800 serious workers’ compensation claims in Australia in 2022
• Body stressing was the leading cause of serious workers’ compensation claims (32.6 per cent)
• Mental health conditions accounted for 9.2 per cent or 11,700 claims in 2021-22. This figure is substantially higher than 10 years ago, rising from 6.5 per cent of all serious claims in 2011-12 to 9.2 per cent in 2021-22.
• Accepted serious workers’ compensation claims for COVID-19 increased substantially from the previous year, from 400 in 2020-21 to 9,500 in 2021-22
• The age group with the lowest frequency rate continued to be workers aged 35-44 years, at 5.4 serious claims per million hours worked.

Key statistics are available here. For the full report, please see here.