BLS Estimates Decline in Private-Industry Rate of Reported Injuries

Private-industry employers reported nearly 48,500 fewer on-the-job injuries and illnesses in 2016 than they did in 2015, continuing a downward trend that has gone on mostly unabated since 2004, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated in a report released Thursday. The BLS' latest report could mean that private-industry workplaces are getting safer — or that fewer employers and workers are reporting injuries, occupational experts say. As regulators cheered the results of the report, the director of a California university's occupational health program said the publ...