Changing workforce demographics are contributing to changes in injuries sustained at work, according to the 2025 Injury Impact Report by Travelers.
As one of the country’s largest workers’ compensation insurers, the Hartford, Connecticut-based company compared workers’ compensation data from the five years before the COVID-19 pandemic with the five years after.
Analysis of more than 2.6 million claims submitted found that while the number of workplace injuries overall continues to decline, the costs associated with them are rising.
“Over the past decade, we’ve seen three trends intensify: increasing retirement ages, ongoing employee turnover and longer injury recovery times,” said Rich Ives, senior vice president of Business Insurance Claim at Travelers. “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.”
The report found that the frequency of workplace injuries overall has declined over the past decade, from 1.2 million workers’ compensation claims received within the past five years, down from 1.4 million from 2015 through 2019.
Many changes have been observed in the workplace over the past 10 years, including continued job churn during and after the pandemic. This created a steady stream of new employees, who are among the most vulnerable to injury.
The report found that employees in their first year on the job accounted for approximately 36 percent of injuries and 34 percent of overall claim costs during the last five years, an increase from the prior five years, when 34 percent of injuries and 32 percent of overall claim costs were attributed to new employees.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that by 2033, approximately 24 percent of employees will be age 55 or older – up from 15 percent in 2003. Travelers has seen the volume of claims involving older employees rise in line with this shift.
Within the past five years, employees aged 50 or older represented 41 percent of the injured employee population, and those 60 and above represented 16 percent. This is up from 39 percent and 13 percent, respectively, when compared with data from 2015 through 2019.
The trend is significant because older employees, while typically injured less frequently than their younger counterparts, tend to require longer recovery times and have more costly claims.
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 pre-pandemic years.
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