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WCRI: Pandemic Shift Scrambles WC Claims Mix by Industry

WCRI's updated claims-composition FlashReport, built on 8 million non-COVID claims across 31 states, finds the industry mix of workers' compensation injuries shifted notably through the pandemic-to-recovery years. For self-insureds, that means expected claim ratios selected by class code are benchmarked against a pre-2020 workforce distribution that no longer describes the payroll actually generating claims.

By Sam, EditorOctober 2026 · 6 min read

The Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI) released a FlashReport on September 30, 2026 finding that the share of workers’ compensation injuries by industry shifted notably as the workforce moved from the pandemic period into the post-pandemic years. The report, “Overview of Workers’ Compensation Claims Composition: A Recent Perspective,” examines 8 million non-COVID-19 claims from injury years 2019 through 2024 across 31 states, representing approximately 83% of workers’ compensation benefits paid in the United States. Authors Olesya Fomenko and Karen Rothkin compare claims mix by industry, age, gender, worker tenure, and injury type, along with major cost components across those groups.

For a self-insured employer, this is not a labor-market curiosity. If your expected claim ratio (ECR) by class code was last benchmarked against pre-2020 industry data, the frequency assumptions feeding that selection now describe a workforce distribution that has moved out from under them. The report is free for WCRI members and available to nonmembers for a fee, and the headline finding is the one that matters for reserving: which industries account for claim volume has changed, and the change persisted into the post-pandemic years rather than reverting.

What the data shows

The full report’s detail, as summarized in an October 5, 2026 review by pharmacy cost management firm HealtheSystems, sketches the new composition. Roughly 75% of work injuries occurred in five industry groups: trade (20%), manufacturing (17%), transportation and utilities (13%), other services (13%), and health care (11%). Sprains and strains (38%) plus lacerations and contusions (25%) accounted for 63% of all injuries, a mix that stayed broadly stable across the study window.

The demographic and tenure findings are where the reserve story gets sharper. About 22% of injuries came from workers aged 55 and older, and another 22% from workers aged 16 to 24, with the relative frequency of injury among workers aged 20 to 24 and above 65 increasing through the period. On tenure, 54% of injuries occurred within a worker’s first two years on the job, and 39% within the first year alone. The pandemic period saw an increase in the relative frequency of short-tenure injuries; that trend slowed post-pandemic but did not reverse. Men accounted for 57% of injuries, with concentration in construction (94%), mining (91%), and manufacturing (71%), while women’s frequency was highest in health care (80%).

Per-claim costs varied widely by segment. Lower extremity fractures carried the highest average medical payments at $25,088 at 12 months, while neurological spine pain injuries carried the highest average indemnity benefits at $16,812. Construction and mining showed the highest combined payments per claim across industries, at $22,752 medical and $16,830 indemnity at 12 months.

This update extends a lineage WCRI started with its July 2024 FlashReport on claims composition, which covered 8.4 million non-COVID-19 claims from injury years 2017 through 2022 across the same 31-state footprint, then about 80% of U.S. workers’ compensation benefits paid. The new release pushes the comparison through 2024 and raises the benefits-paid coverage to roughly 83%, which means the industry-mix shift it documents is measured across the full pandemic-to-recovery arc rather than just the disruption itself.

Who it affects

The readers with the most at stake are self-insured employers and captives whose payrolls span multiple industries or whose class-code mix changed after 2020: hospital systems and health care networks absorbing clinical turnover, warehousing and logistics operations that expanded headcount rapidly, manufacturers running older workforces, and public entities with diverse job classifications from clerical to public safety. Group captives and public-entity pools face a second-order version of the same problem, because a member-level shift in industry mix changes the pool’s aggregate frequency assumption even when no single member’s operations changed.

The reserve mechanism: your ECR is benchmarked to a workforce that moved

The lever here is frequency mix, not severity. A shift in which industries, ages, and tenure bands generate injuries changes the frequency distribution feeding manual rates and ECR selection by class code, separate from any change in overall claim severity. Two specific assumptions deserve scrutiny.

First, the tenure finding. If 54% of injuries occur in a worker’s first two years and 39% in the first year, then turnover is a frequency driver in its own right. An employer whose post-pandemic turnover normalized but whose actuarial ECR still embeds pandemic-era new-hire concentration could be over-reserved; the reverse holds for healthcare and logistics operations still running elevated turnover. The question for your next study is whether the frequency trend selection treats tenure-band risk separately from overall headcount, or simply scales claim counts off payroll.

Second, the industry-mix finding. Where your own industry’s share of injuries has shifted, the credibility weighting between company-specific experience and industry-wide benchmarks should shift with it. A self-insured whose own loss history is thin in a class code that now carries a larger share of national claim volume has less reason to lean on that history and more reason to weight the industry data. That is a direct input to the expected loss ratio method, and it compounds through every downstream IBNR calculation, as covered in our guide to workers’ compensation IBNR for self-insured employers.

The finding also lines up with what NCCI’s own work has been signaling. NCCI’s industry frequency splits have shown divergence by industry and state for several cycles, and its portable-benefits and worker-classification research has been probing who counts as a covered worker at all. WCRI’s claim-level data gives self-insureds an independent check on whether their own industry’s frequency assumptions still hold, one that does not run through the rating-bureau pipeline.

Where this shows up in your reserves

Open last quarter’s actuarial report and find the ECR selection table, usually near the front of the assumptions section. Look at the class codes listed and the benchmark year cited for the industry frequency data behind each ratio. If the benchmark predates 2020, the industry-mix shift documented here applies to you. Next, pull your own claim count by tenure band from your TPA or third-party administrator data extract; if first-year injuries are running near or above the 39% national share, your frequency assumption is carrying a turnover effect that payroll-based exposure alone will not capture. Finally, check the credibility section: if your actuary is weighting company experience heavily in class codes where the national injury share has moved, ask whether that weighting was revisited after the mix shift or inherited from an earlier study.

What this means for your next review

Put the ECR benchmark date on the agenda for your next reserve study or interim monitoring meeting, alongside a single question: was our expected claim ratio by class code re-benchmarked against post-pandemic industry mix data, or is it still running on a pre-2020 baseline? The full FlashReport detail beyond the press release is worth obtaining if you have WCRI membership, and the next corroboration point to watch is whether NCCI’s next State of the Line release shows the same industry-mix shift using payroll and class-code data. Expect any ECR correction to surface gradually, in accident-year development on 2023 through 2025 years, rather than as a single adjustment.

Decision-maker checklist

  • Ask your actuary when the ECR by class code was last re-benchmarked against post-pandemic industry mix data, and get the benchmark year in writing.
  • Confirm your TPA’s data extract flags hire date or tenure at the claim level, so first-year injury concentration can be measured against the 39% national benchmark.
  • If your industry’s injury share shifted per this report, ask whether the credibility weighting between company-specific and industry experience should move.
  • For group captives and pools, request a member-level industry-mix breakdown to check whether the pool’s aggregate frequency assumption reflects post-2024 operations.
  • Watch for NCCI’s next State of the Line release as an independent corroboration of the industry-mix shift.

An independent reserve review brings a second pair of eyes that’s free of the TPA’s or fronting carrier’s incentive structure. We’re working on a directory of independent reviewing actuaries. If you’d like to be considered, get in touch.

Sources

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