Issue 046November 2026Updated
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BLS Injury Data Due Nov. 18: What 2.3 Means for WC Frequency

BLS is scheduled to publish 2025 workplace injury and illness rates on November 18, 2026. The 2024 rate of 2.3 cases per 100 workers was a record low, but two thirds of that year's decline was illness, not injury, and the illness tailwind is nearly spent.

By Sam, EditorNovember 2026 · 5 min read

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is scheduled to publish the 2025 Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII) on Wednesday, November 18, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. Eastern, according to the BLS November release calendar and the Injuries, Illnesses, and Fatalities program page. The release has not happened yet. This piece sets out what the already-published 2024 data say, how they relate to workers compensation claim frequency, and what to check on the day.

The baseline is the 2024 release, published January 22, 2026. Private industry employers reported 2.5 million nonfatal injuries and illnesses in 2024, down 3.1% from 2023. The total recordable case (TRC) rate was 2.3 per 100 full-time equivalent (FTE) workers, down from 2.4, and BLS called it the lowest rate in the series going back to 2003.

What the 2024 decline was made of

The headline overstates how much underlying injury frequency improved. BLS attributes the 2024 decrease to a 26.0% drop in illness cases to 148,000, driven by a 46.1% drop in respiratory illness cases to 54,000. The count table in the release shows the split:

Private industry cases (thousands)2019202220232024
Total recordable2,814.02,804.22,569.02,488.4
Injuries2,686.82,343.62,368.92,340.4
Illnesses127.2460.7200.1148.0
Respiratory illnesses10.8365.0100.254.0

Total cases fell by 80,600 in 2024. Illnesses account for 52,100 of that, or about 65%. Injury cases fell 28,500, or 1.2%, after rising 1.1% in 2023. The injury rate was 2.2 per 100 FTE workers. The TRC rate path of 2.7 in 2022 (per the 2023 release), 2.4 in 2023, and 2.3 in 2024 is therefore mostly a pandemic respiratory unwind, not a three-year step down in traumatic injury.

The same pattern shows in the lost-time measure. The private industry rate of cases with days away from work (DAFW) was 1.2 per 100 FTE workers in 2022 and 0.9 in 2023, when DAFW cases fell 20.1%. In 2024 it was 0.8, per the BLS 2024 industry rate table. That table puts the 2024 rate of cases with days away, restriction, or transfer (DART) at 1.4, with job transfer or restriction only (DJTR) at 0.5 and other recordable cases at 1.0.

How SOII differs from claim frequency

SOII is not a claims database. Per the BLS Handbook of Methods, it is a sample of approximately 230,000 establishments reporting from OSHA logs. A case is recordable if it involves loss of consciousness, days away from work, restricted work or job transfer, or medical treatment beyond first aid. Federal workers and the self-employed are outside its scope. BLS states its rates per 100 FTE workers.

NCCI’s lost-time claim frequency is built differently. In the State of the Line slides NCCI presented to NCOIL on July 17, 2026, it is the change in claims per $1 million of pure premium for private carriers and state funds in NCCI states, developed to ultimate, with premium adjusted to current wage and pure premium level. It excludes large-deductible policies and excludes COVID-19 claims through July 1, 2023. NCCI’s preliminary 2025 figure is a 2% decline, against an average annual change of negative 3.8% over 2005 to 2024.

Three differences matter for a self-insured reader:

  • Case definition. A DAFW case needs one day away beyond the day of injury. A lost-time claim needs indemnity to be paid, which happens only after a state waiting period. The 2023-2024 median DAFW case lasted 8 days, so many DAFW cases are short. SOII’s 0.8 is the closest public proxy for lost-time frequency, not a match.
  • Illness treatment. SOII counted pandemic respiratory cases; NCCI’s series strips COVID-19 claims through mid-2023. That is why SOII fell faster than claim frequency in 2023 and 2024.
  • Population. NCCI’s series excludes large-deductible policies and has no self-insured data. SOII includes self-insured employers. For a self-insured, SOII is one of the few national benchmarks that actually contains employers like it.

The reserve mechanism

The lever is the frequency component of the a priori expected claim ratio used for immature accident years in the Bornhuetter-Ferguson method and the expected loss ratio method. Many programs carry a frequency trend into the prior for the two or three latest years, where reported counts are too green to override it; see the workers compensation IBNR guide.

Illustration (hypothetical arithmetic, not program data): a prior that projects claim counts forward at NCCI’s long-term negative 3.8% when actual frequency is running at negative 2% understates expected counts by about 1.9% after one year and 3.8% after two (0.98 / 0.962 = 1.019, squared = 1.038). Severity then compounds on the missing claims. NCCI’s same slides show medical and indemnity severity each up 4% in 2025. An actuary.info analysis of NCCI’s hiring data makes the related pricing point: slower frequency declines plus 4% severity leave little room for further loss cost reductions, and new-hire-heavy sectors carry the most frequency risk.

Industry mix moves the answer more than the national rate does. In 2024, transportation and warehousing ran a DAFW rate of 2.1 and a DART rate of 3.5, against 0.8 and 1.4 for private industry. Nursing and residential care facilities ran 2.4 and 3.6. Hospitals had a TRC rate of 5.1 but a DAFW rate of 1.3, because 3.0 of the 5.1 was other recordable cases. Construction’s DAFW rate was 0.9. We covered the same divergence in NCCI’s industry and state frequency report, the enforcement angle in OSHA’s warehouse emphasis program, and the hospital reporting effect in the Joint Commission violence goal.

What to check on November 18

  1. Injury count, not the headline. Compare 2025 private industry injury cases to 2,340,400. That is the number closest to claim frequency.
  2. Respiratory illness. At 54,000 in 2024 against 10,800 in 2019, at most about 43,000 excess cases remain, or 1.7% of the 2024 total. Any larger fall in total cases has to come from injuries.
  3. DAFW and DART rates. Compare to 0.8 and 1.4. Note whether BLS publishes 2025 case detail as a single year or as a two-year estimate, as it did for 2023-2024.
  4. Your sector row. Pull the TRC, DART, and DAFW rates for your industry and compare the change with your own OSHA 300 log rates and with the claim count trend in your actuarial report.
  5. The DAFW share of DART. It was 61.5% in 2023-2024. A falling share means more cases handled through restricted duty, which lowers indemnity frequency without lowering medical-only counts.

Our call

The 2024 record low was two thirds illness. With injuries down only 1.2% in 2024 and NCCI’s 2025 frequency down 2%, we expect the 2025 private industry TRC rate to print at 2.2 or 2.3, with injury cases within about 2% of the 2024 count. A print in that range would confirm that the steep SOII declines of 2023 and 2024 were a pandemic artifact that is now nearly exhausted.

The directional read for reserves: accident years 2025 and 2026 priors built on a frequency trend steeper than negative 2% are more likely light than heavy, and the gap is largest for healthcare, warehousing, and transportation books. A program whose own counts are flat should not borrow a national decline to justify a lower prior. If the release shows injury cases down more than 3%, that view should be revisited. For how counts feed the method, see loss development factors and the NCCI trend dashboard piece.

Sources

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