Standardised incidence rate of serious accidents at work.
Calculation
The standardised incidence rate of serious accidents at work is the number of persons involved in accidents at work resulting in more than 3 days’ absence per 100,000 persons in employment. An accident at work is a discrete occurrence in the course of work which leads to physical or mental harm. This includes accidents in the course of work outside the premises of one’s business, even if caused by a third party (on clients’ premises, on another company’s premises, in a public place or during transport, including road traffic accidents) and cases of acute poisoning. Occurrences having only a medical origin, occupational diseases and accidents on the way to work are excluded. A serious accident is one that causes more than three days absence from work excluding the day of the accident. The incident rates are standardised by economic activity to eliminate differences due to different distributions of the national workforce across the high-risk and low-risk industries. This is achieved by giving each aggregated NACE branch the same weight at national level as in the European Union total (see remarks and references for more information on NACE and the standardisation procedure).
Relevant dimensions and subgroups
Calendar year.
Country.
Region (according to ISARE recommendations; see data availability).
Sex.
Age group (18-24, 25-64 and 65+).
Preferred data type and data source
Preferred data type
Administrative data (insurance-based systems and labour inspectorate-based reporting).
Preferred data source
Eurostat, European Statistics on Accidents at Work (ESAW).
Data availability
In the Eurostat database data are available for all EU-15 members (from 1994 onwards), Norway (from 1995 onwards) and Switzerland (from 2004 onwards). Data are also collected for the new Member States, and these are published as of 2008. Breakdowns by age group and sex are available, though age groups as preferred by ECHIM need to be compiled from the more detailed breakdowns provided by Eurostat. Breakdowns by region (NUTS 2 level for most countries) are not yet published. The ISARE project on regional data has collected data on accidents at work (indicators: ‘number of accidents related to work’, and ‘number of accidents related to work per 100,000 active population).
Data periodicity
Data are updated annually.
Rationale
This indicator provides information about the risk of the occurrence of a serious accident at work. This is regarded as an indication/determinant of the (occupational) health and an indication of safety regulations in a country.
Remarks
Indicator “Serious accidents at work” is one of the EU Sustainable Development Indicators and “Serious accidents at work by gender’’ also is an EU Structural Indicator.
Eurostat/ESAW was recommended as preferred data source for ECHIM by the WORKHEALTH project.
Eurostat metadata: the national ESAW sources are the declarations of accidents at work, either to the public (Social Security) or private specific insurance for accidents at work, or to other relevant national authority (Labour Inspection, etc.) for countries having a "universal" Social Security system. For the Netherlands only survey data are available for the non-fatal accidents at work (a special module in the national labour force survey).
Eurostat notes: In general the employees in the private sector are covered by all national reporting systems. However some important sectors are not covered by all Member States and the coverage of the self-employed is very diverse. The specification of the sectors is given according to the NACE classification (NACE = Nomenclature statistique des activités économiques dans la Communauté Européenne). The incidence rate is calculated for the total of the so-called 9 common branches (according NACE, version Rev1). These are: agriculture; hunting and forestry; manufacturing; electricity, gas and water supply; construction; wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles, motorcycles and personal and household goods; hotels and restaurants; transport, storage and communication; financial intermediation; real estate, renting and business activities.
There is a difference between the Member States in the reporting of accidents at work. In some countries payment of benefits depends on reports submitted to the insurer whereas in other countries there is a legal obligation to notify accidents, yet benefits do not depend on them being reported first. This may result in a restricted level of comparability across countries. Many countries provide weights or reporting rates to correct for under-reporting.
According to the metadata description Eurostat also provides data on accidents at work according to the following breakdowns: occupation (ISCO-COM 2-digit) and employment status (from ICSE 1993) of the victim; economic activity (NACE 2-digit) and size of the local unit of the enterprise; type and part of body of the injury; date and time of the accident. However, such disaggregations are too detailed for ECHIM purposes.
From 2011 onwards the international standard of occupation (ISCO-88) will be used for the statistic of Accidents at work and occupational diseases.
Definition
