Summary

This statistical profile is part of a monitoring process based on exploitation of administrative data from the Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST) and Statistics Canada’s census data. This process, which began over 35 years ago at the Institut de recherche Robert-Sauvé en santé et en sécurité du travail (IRSST), makes it possible to identify the groups of workers and industries-occupational categories with the greatest OHS problems, which constitutes valuable information when planning research and prevention activities.

This report presents risk indicators (frequency rate calculated with numbers of full-time equivalent (FTE) workers), severity indicators (average duration of compensation, permanent physical or mental impairment (PPMI)), risk-severity indicators (FTE frequency-severity rate), and indicators for the cost of workplace injuries (including illness) that are accepted and those with time-loss compensation (TLC) for the 2015–2016 period. The descriptive characteristics of the injuries are also presented.

The indicators were calculated based on the number of FTE employees. The use of FTE employees, rather than the number of individuals, allows one to take into account the significance of atypical work, in particular part-time or casual work, and differences according to age and gender. Separate indicators for youth (15 to 24 years old), experienced workers (aged 55 and over), occupational diseases and targeted industries are also presented. Moreover, classification tables of industries-occupational categories for all workers, and according to gender and age group, are presented in the appended report.

Changes

Between the previous set of indicators (2010–2012) and the current one (2015–2016), the average number of workplace injuries compensated by the CNESST dropped. This phenomenon continued the downward trend that had begun at the end of the 1980s. Nevertheless, the 2015–2016 period marked a tipping point in this trend. From 2015 to 2019, the most recent year for which the compiled statistics were available at the time this study was completed, the number of cases increased every year. However, this trend is not specific to Québec since the same thing is found throughout Canada.

Occupational category, gender and age group

In 2015–2016, more than 91,100 injuries were accepted annually by the CNESST, including almost 65,100 TLC injuries. The analysis by occupational category, which is a classification based on the physical effort required of the worker, shows that workers in manual occupations have a much higher FTE frequency rate (5.4 TLC injuries per 100 FTE workers) than workers in non-manual (0.6%) or mixed (2.5%) occupations, and this applies to both men and women. Moreover, close to 63% of all occupational injuries with TLC affect men. This situation is mainly due to the fact that there is a higher proportion of men in occupations where the risk of injury is highest, namely the manual occupations.

Although, overall, men have a higher frequency-severity rate for occupational injuries (3.0 days per FTE worker for men versus 2.2 for women), women have the highest rates for each occupational category. This difference is largely due to the fact that men and women are not equally distributed among occupational categories.

The analyses according to age group show that, for the 2015–2016 period, the situation for young workers is characterized by a higher-than-average FTE frequency rate. Nevertheless, when one bears occupational category in mind, the FTE frequency rate for workers aged 15 to 24 years is lower than that for all workers in manual and mixed occupations. Young workers have a higher overall FTE frequency rate mainly because most of them are in the manual and mixed occupations, which are associated with a higher risk of injury.

The analysis of the severity of injuries according to age shows differences between experienced workers (aged 55 and over) and younger ones. Indeed, average durations of compensation and the average cost per injury increase with age. The study also highlights certain differences related to descriptors of occupational injuries according to age (injury site, nature, type of accident, causal agent).

Occupational illnesses

Occupational illnesses, which represented 6% of the injuries accepted in 2010–2012, represented approximately 10% of the occupational injuries accepted in the 2015–2016 period, or some 9,300 new cases per year. These occupational illnesses affected more men (8,600 cases) than women (730 cases). Since 2010–2012, the number of occupational illnesses has increased while the number of workplace accidents has decreased. Although they are less common than workplace accidents, occupational illnesses generally have more serious consequences. Thus, almost 72% of employees who had an occupational illness present a PPMI. In addition, their average duration of compensation (calculated for the 7.3% of cases with TLC) is approximately three times as long as for TLC injuries as a whole. Overall, 89% of occupational illnesses are ear problems, which represent the majority of occupational illnesses for both men (92%) and women (61%).

Cost of occupational injuries

The cost of occupational injuries constitutes a general measure of the impact of such injuries; it considers the financial and human costs assumed by employers, workers and the community. The average cost of occupational injuries accepted during a year is estimated at $5.98 billion (2016 $) for the 2015–2016 period. The average cost of an occupational injury amounts to $65,550. The average cost of an occupational illness ($218,050) is about 4.5 times higher than that of an accident ($48,140). Exposure to noise and exposure to a harmful substance are the kinds of accident or exposure that generate the highest average cost per injury. Exposure to noise and falls on the same level, slips and trips are the kinds of accident or exposure that cause the highest total costs per year.

Targeted groups

Certain industries that are targeted less frequently stand out only when the indicator takes occupational category into account. Thus, when setting research or prevention priorities, it is important to identify the industries-occupational categories that present the highest OHS risks.

The five industries-occupational categories that appear most frequently in the 16 classification tables are manual workers in specialized construction contracting firms; truck transportation; manufacturing of plastic and rubber goods; local, municipal and regional public services; and mineral extraction and quarrying (except oil and gas extraction).

Each indicator allows the impact of injuries to be analyzed from a specific angle. However, the FTE frequency-severity rate and the average cost per FTE have the advantage of taking both the risk and the severity of injuries into consideration, so they should be chosen preferentially. The 20 industries-occupational categories with the highest FTE frequency-severity rates for injuries with TLC represent 9% of the workforce but 28% of injuries with TLC. And, regarding classification by average cost per FTE, the groups identified represent 7% of the workforce but 23% of total costs. These indicators are therefore very relevant for identifying the groups of workers most affected by the workplace injuries compensated by the CNESST.