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Thursday, January 24, 2013

Two rural jobs rank among 4 deadliest professions

National Public Radio, using information from Planet Money, has created a nice graphic displaying the rate of work-related, on-the-job deaths in 2011 for U.S. workers using Bureau of Labor Statistics data. At least two jobs that take place in rural areas made the four deadliest: logging, second, and farming or ranching, fourth. Fishing ranks first, flying is third, and policing is fifth, at more than five times the national average. A commenter on the NPR page asked about military service, which disproportionately draws rural people, and another commented replied with the military death rate, which would have ranked second if included among the civilian jobs.

Jess Jiang reports that loggers are most often killed by falling trees or out-of-control machines. Farmers and ranchers are most often killed during accidents involving farm vehicles, like tractors or combines. "The number of fishermen who die on the job has gone down by nearly half since 2009," Jiang writes. "But fishing is still the deadliest job in the U.S. Most fishermen who die on the job die from drowning, typically after their boat capsizes, according to Jill Janocha of the Bureau of Labor Statistics." (Read more)

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