Thanks for your comment. You raise an interesting question that we looked at before we posted this because we’re not statisticians.

Think about this way – if 2% of all men get hurt and 2% of all women get hurt, then only 2% of all people get hurt, not 4%. For example, if there were 100 workers, split 50/50 between men and women, with 2% of men and 2% of women getting injured, then 1 man and 1 woman would report an injury for a total of 2 people.

If the workforce was evenly dispersed between men and women, and 4% of all the workers were injured, with only 2% of them being women, then 6% of all the men would have to get injured in order for there to be a 4% injury rate among all workers (i.e. for women and men respectively, 50% x 2% + 50% x 6% = 4%). Using the example above, if 1 woman (out of 50, or 2%) reports an injury, then 3 men (out of the 50, or 6%) would have to be injured in order for 4% of all workers to experience an injury.

Since the workforce is disproportionately male, at least in this study (roughly 2/3 men compared to 1/3 women), men reported injuries at less than the 6% rate in the previous paragraph. In fact, about 5% of the men reported an injury. That’s how the 4% is arrived at – 2/3 x 5% + 1/3 x 2% = 4%.

In the interest of time, we didn’t go into all of this detail in our post. We hope this helps clear up any confusion. We thank you for providing a reason to get into these details.

These stories come out every year and are either statistically inaccurate and/or fail to take into consideration several factors.

Please make corrections or detractions.