Manufacturing industry
In 2010/11 manufacturing jobs accounted for about 10% of the British workforce, but for 21% of fatalities and 15% of reported injuries to employees. There have been reductions in injury and ill health rates over the past decade.
In 2010/11 there were:
- 27 fatal injuries to workers compared to an average of 30 in the previous five years – about a quarter of the number 20 years ago (RIDDOR);
- 17 599 reported non-fatal injures and an estimated 27 000 self-reported injuries. 11% of the reported injuries involved contact with moving machinery (RIDDOR and LFS);
- Food manufacture had a rate of reported major injury of almost twice the rate for manufacturing as a whole (RIDDOR);
- over 3 000 occupational cancer cases are estimated to arise each year as a result of past exposures in the manufacturing sector (Cancer Burden Study, 2010)
- an estimated 32 000 new cases of work-related ill health (LFS)
- about 1.9 million lost working days (0.73 days per full-time equivalent worker) due to self-reported work-related illness or workplace injury (LFS)
Estimated incidence rates of non-fatal injury per 100 000 people working in manufacturing in the last 12 months (all injuries and reportable injuries with over 3 day absence)