C2
Work
The second of four harm channels, and the one where injuries are counted rather than modelled. Fatal and non-fatal injuries at work, by country, year and economic activity, as the national systems that record them report them.
This is the channel that makes injuries a real metric. For conflict, no source counts the wounded and the figure has to be derived; here an inspectorate, an insurer or an employer counted the case, so the number is reported rather than inferred. What the reported number is NOT is complete: it covers the workers a country’s reporting system covers, which in much of the world is the formal economy and no more.
What this channel counts
C2 counts injuries arising from work — the fall, the machine, the collapse, the vehicle — as the country’s own labour statistics record them. Like conflict, and unlike deprivation and pollution, the harm is observed at an incident rather than attributed through a risk factor, so it carries no population attributable fraction.
Occupational DISEASE is a different matter and is not in these figures. A cancer thirty years after an exposure is attributed, not counted, and it arrives with the exposure machinery in a later session. The international estimates put work-related disease at roughly four times the injury toll, so what is published here is a floor of a floor.
Directly reported by national labour statistics. Excluded: commuting accidents where the reporter separates them, and any death already counted under C1.
What is in the ledger today
23,542
Events in the ledger
1,523,089
Deaths recorded by the source
142
Countries
0
Conflicts
1970–2024
Years covered
These figures are the publisher’s, republished with the credit its licence requires. Nothing on this page has been attributed to a product, a company or a material.
| Confidence of the death rows | Ledger rows |
|---|---|
| LOW | 113,765 |
The causes inside it
| Cause | Needs a PAF | Ledger rows |
|---|---|---|
| Occupational injury C2-INJURY |
no | 23,542 |
| Occupational disease C2-DISEASE |
yes | not counted here |
What this channel does not capture
- A country that reports nothing is recorded as reporting nothing. It is never entered as a zero, because a zero would put the countries with the weakest labour inspection at the top of the safety table — the exact inversion of the truth.
- Reporting lags two to three years almost everywhere, so the most recent years are thin and will fill in later. A figure computed today from the last reported year is not a figure about today.
- Definitions differ between reporters. Some count commuting accidents and some do not; the threshold for a reportable non-fatal injury is three lost days in one country and four in another. Each row carries the definition it came from, and the differences are recorded rather than smoothed away.
- Coverage is of the reporting system, not of the workforce. Informal and artisanal work — which is where the most dangerous conditions concentrate — is largely outside these statistics everywhere they matter most.
- European figures appear twice, from two publishers, and are counted once. The international series collects Europe’s numbers from the European one, so the European rows are loaded for comparison and are never added to the total.
- A death here may also be a death in another channel: a miner killed in an armed attack is occupational harm and conflict harm at once. No channel total is added to another until the overlap between them is measured.
Sources and credit
| Release | Retrieved | SHA-256 |
|---|---|---|
| ilostat · fatal-20260910 | 2026-09-10 | 6ce3af7a446e035e… |
| ilostat · non_fatal-20260910 | 2026-09-10 | 1099379f2ad98fe6… |
| eurostat · esaw-fatal-20260910 | 2026-09-10 | 9d7364f35bb04316… |
| eurostat · esaw-non_fatal-20260910 | 2026-09-10 | c84a1b69cd003ad9… |
Eurostat, European Commission — esaw-fatal-20260910, retrieved 2026-09-10 from https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/api/dissemination/sdmx/2.1/data/hsw_n2_02?format=SDMX-CSV. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Data modified by HumanToll.Eurostat, European Commission — esaw-non_fatal-20260910, retrieved 2026-09-10 from https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/api/dissemination/sdmx/2.1/data/hsw_n2_01?format=SDMX-CSV. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Data modified by HumanToll.International Labour Organization, ILOSTAT. The ILO did not prepare, review or endorse these derived figures; responsibility for them rests solely with Quiescence — fatal-20260910, retrieved 2026-09-10 from https://sdmx.ilo.org/rest/data/ILO,DF_INJ_FATL_ECO_NB,1.0/all. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Data modified by HumanToll.International Labour Organization, ILOSTAT. The ILO did not prepare, review or endorse these derived figures; responsibility for them rests solely with Quiescence — non_fatal-20260910, retrieved 2026-09-10 from https://sdmx.ilo.org/rest/data/ILO,DF_INJ_NFTL_ECO_NB,1.0/all. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Data modified by HumanToll.
Questions
Are these HumanToll’s numbers?
No. They are the publishers’, republished with the credit their licences require and with the exact release and checksum they came from. Nothing here has been attributed to a product or a company.
Why do the two publishers not simply add up?
Because they are not independent. Europe’s figures reach the international series from the European one, so adding them would count every European injury twice. The European rows are marked as a second opinion rather than an addition, which also means a disagreement between them is visible.
Why is there no range on these numbers?
Because the publisher reports a count. The uncertainty in occupational statistics is not sampling error, it is missing cases, and correcting for that is a modelling choice rather than a property of the row. It is a scenario setting, so you can see it and switch it off.
Does a work injury here mean a product is responsible for it?
Not yet, and not by itself. This page records that the injury happened, in which country, year and economic activity. Connecting an activity to the things it produces is a separate, evidenced step.