Report shows 1.8 million affected by ill health at work

Nearly two million workers reported suffering from work-related ill health in 2022/23, with around half of the 1.8 million cases resulting from stress, depression and anxiety, according to the HSE’s latest annual statistics on work-related ill health and workplace injuries. Both the overall rate of illness and the rate for work-related stress are higher than before the Covid-19 pandemic struck. The official figures also show an estimated 35.2 million working days were lost in 2022/23 due to self-reported work-related ill health or injury.

The number of workers killed in work-related incidents rose to 135, 12 more than in 2021/22. This included 45 construction workers, 16 more (a 55% rise) than the previous year and above the five-year average rate for fatal injuries in the sector.

Falls from a height and being struck by a moving vehicle or object are the main causes of fatal injury, between them accounting for over half of all fatal injuries each year. Some 561,000 workers also sustained a self-reported non-fatal injury in the workplace over the year.

The official HSE figures vastly underestimate the true scale of work-related death and injury, according to the Hazards Campaign.