Risk & Insurance Online

The agriculture industry in California accounted for 5.5 percent of all injury claims and 5.9 percent of all workers' compensation benefit payments in the state over an eight-year study period, officials recently announced.

According to the California Workers' Compensation Institute, which issued the report, recent job losses in other employment sectors are causing these proportions to grow.

The report detailed data on accident year 2000 through 2008 claims experience among agriculture workers in the state, a diverse employment group that encompasses everything from poultry raising to landscape gardening. The report was based on an analysis of nearly 133,000 injury claims.

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Researchers found that aggregate loss payments on these claims totaled more than $1.46 billion. The three most common injury categories for these workers were medical back problems without spinal cord involvement (typically sprains and strains, which comprised nearly 21 percent of the claims but more than 30 percent of the paid losses in this sector); followed by minor wounds and injuries to the skin (20 percent of the claims but only 2.8 percent of the payments); and shoulder, arm, knee and lower leg sprains (10.8 percent of the claims and 8.4 percent of the losses).

Read more at the WORKERSCOMP Forum^TM homepage.

February 22, 2010

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