For managers looking for a snapshot on the state of safety, key findings of a new survey indicate that although workplace injuries have decreased during the past 10 years, recovery times—and the costs associated with them—are climbing.
In addition, first-year workers and those over 60 years old are less safe. Skilled labor shortages and high turnover may be to blame.
“Over the past decade, we’ve seen three trends intensify: increasing retirement ages, ongoing employee turnover, and longer injury recovery times,” said Rich Ives, SVP of Business Insurance Claim at Travelers, citing the company’s 2025 Injury Impact Report.
The report looked at workers compensation stats from the five years before and after Covid and analyzed 2.6 million claims.
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“Our aim with this report is to provide employers with insights on these dynamics that are contributing to growing claim severity so they can better navigate these workforce challenges, protect their employees, and keep their businesses running,” Ives said.
New and old hurting
Employees in their first year on the job accounted for approximately 36% of injuries and 34% of claim costs during the last five years. Comparing the most recent five years of the survey with the first five, that's a two percent increase on both counts.
As for the aging workers, the past five years has seen that employees aged 50 or older made up 41% of the injured employee population, and those 60 and above represented 16%. This is up from 39% and 13%, respectively, when compared with data from 2015 through 2019.
Travelers flags this trend as significant because older employees, although typically injured less frequently than younger workers, tend to require longer recovery periods and incur higher claims.
Getting back to work
Recovery times are trending up, which doesn't help the skilled labor shortage or a company's bottom line.
From 2020 through 2024, employees missed an average of 80 workdays per injury, an increase of more than seven days when compared with the previous five-year period. Injured employees aged 60 and above were out of work due to workplace injuries for nearly 97 days, almost 17 more days than the overall average and an increase of 14 days from the pre-Covid period.
When it comes to accidents, the culprits haven't changed much, according to the survey.
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Slips, trips and falls, overexertion, being struck by an object, vehicle accidents, and caught-in or caught-between hazards were the most common causes of losses costing $250,000 or more.
The risks have not changed, but managers should note that it may pay dividends to intensify safety onboarding efforts with new employees and dedicated refreshers for veteran employees.
