The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Council for Compensation Insurance have reported long-running improvements in work injury risk.  Over the past 20 years, the government-tallied rate of lost-time injuries and illnesses has declined by 60%.

Is the American worker really that safer, in a broad sense of that word? When injuries occur, have chances of recovery improved?  And, is the injured worker and her or his household better protected financially where it really counts, which is a sure path back into employment?

In an earlier article  I noted how many factors affect how workers and their employers experience the total burden of work disability, such resulting from a work-caused rotator cuff tear.  No single statistic will tell the story because any single finding tends to break down after comparing demographic groups. 

By stepping back to view the entire disability risk horizon of the working age adult extending into retirement, one sees a sustained while bumpy progression toward lower disability burden since the 1980s.  

Just last week, a medical journal reported that “rates of diabetes-related complications have declined substantially in the past two decades.” 

After looking at many studies of personal health, I concluded some years ago that the typical white middle-class American has been extending her or his quality of life by on average about two months per year.  For instance, my white 94 year-old mother can be said to have added 40 months of quality life since 1994.  My siblings and I are arranging now for her to adapt to user-friendly voice-recognition software that did not exist a few years ago.

Recovery chances specifically for work-injured individuals appear to have improved.  The earlier article noted advances in brain injury treatment.  The single most important medical innovation for injured workers in the last twenty years is probably micro-surgery of the shoulder and knee.  Many sheet rock installers are employable today because of micro-surgery on their rotator cuffs.

These advances in recovery have been thwarted in several ways that are in part demographically driven.  Obesity clearly complicates recovery and might increase work-injury frequency.

To counter this added disability risk, employers can legally put up barriers to limit the invasion of fat into their workplaces when obesity’s functional manifestations, such as shortness of breath, prevent essential job functions. Advanced Ergonomics, which performs pre-placement testing, told me that for one client 9% of normal-weight job applicants failed endurance testing but 51% of morbidly obese applicants failed the test.
 
Obesity rates have soared unevenly.  The history of obesity by state since 1990 shows an across-the-board increase with greater disparity among states. 

With this notion of disparate experience in mind, consider how three major demographic groups have experienced the burden of work disability since the early 1990s. Note how they experience the burden very differently and note how they influence the design of disability protections.

The Old Guard: Male American citizens engaged in full regular employment.