Tag Archives: older workers

Aging “Baby Boomers” and Workers’ Compensation Part 2

Today’s post comes from guest author Tom Domer from The Domer Law Firm. Earlier this month, Mr. Domer was honored by the Workers Injury Law & Advocacy Group (WILG) with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his career representing injured workers.

Last week, we started talking about some of the NCCI’s interesting conclusions about the implications of “Baby Boomers” in the workplace (see Part 1 of this article). In today’s post, we discuss these conclusions in more detail. The frequency of injury has steadily declined since the mid-1990s, with age group differences in frequency largely eliminated.  The decline in frequency has occurred for all age groups.  The differences among age groups in the early 1990s had almost completely disappeared by 2010.

A longstanding worker’s compensation maxim that “younger workers have much higher injury rates” is no longer true.  For example: the injury rate for workers age 55-64 was 16% lower than the frequency for all workers in the mid-1990s but actually 1% higher in 2010, indicating that the differences have clearly narrowed.

Lastly, in terms of severity of claims, older workers certainly cost more, primarily due to higher wages and increased medical costs for older workers.  The severity of medical costs Continue reading Aging “Baby Boomers” and Workers’ Compensation Part 2