Where Americans work may be almost as important as what they do when it comes to occupational safety.
A new analysis from Anidjar & Levine finds substantial differences in workplace fatality risk across the United States, with Wyoming ranking as the most dangerous state for workers in 2026. The state received a Worker Risk Index score of 99.4 out of 100, ahead of Mississippi at 89.8 and North Dakota at 84.7.
The findings come as workplace deaths remain a major national safety issue. There were 5,070 fatal work injuries in the United States in 2024, equivalent to 3.3 deaths for every 100,000 full-time-equivalent workers. Although that represented a 4% decline from 5,283 fatalities in 2023, the latest federal data still equate to roughly one worker dying from a job-related injury every 104 minutes.
Anidjar & Levine’s analysis goes beyond raw death totals by combining current fatality rates with longer-term workplace risk, recent trends and the types of jobs that dominate each state’s economy.
The States Where Workers Face the Highest Risk
Wyoming sits well above the national workplace fatality rate.
In 2024, the state recorded 13.9 fatal occupational injuries per 100,000 workers, more than four times the national rate of 3.3. Wyoming’s five-year average was also elevated at 13.2 deaths per 100,000 workers, suggesting its ranking is not based solely on an unusual single year.
The 10 states with the highest overall Worker Risk Index scores were:
| Rank | State | Worker Risk Score | 2024 Fatality Rate per 100,000 Workers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wyoming | 99.4 | 13.9 |
| 2 | Mississippi | 89.8 | 8.0 |
| 3 | North Dakota | 84.7 | 6.8 |
| 4 | Arkansas | 84.5 | 6.2 |
| 5 | Montana | 84.5 | 5.8 |
| 6 | Alaska | 80.8 | 7.1 |
| 7 | Idaho | 80.6 | 5.0 |
| 8 | West Virginia | 79.6 | 5.8 |
| 9 | Iowa | 77.3 | 5.2 |
| 10 | South Dakota | 74.7 | 5.8 |
The geographic pattern is notable. The top 10 is concentrated in Western, Southern and Plains states, while no Northeastern state appears among the 10 highest-risk states.
Collectively, the difference between the top and bottom of the ranking is substantial. The 10 highest-risk states averaged 6.96 workplace deaths per 100,000 workers in 2024, compared with 2.17 among the 10 states with the lowest risk, a gap of more than three to one.
New Jersey Records the Lowest Worker Risk Score
At the other end of Anidjar & Levine’s index, New Jersey ranks 50th with a score of 10.2, followed by New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
| Lowest Risk Position | State | Worker Risk Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Jersey | 10.2 |
| 2 | New Hampshire | 11.6 |
| 3 | Massachusetts | 12.2 |
| 4 | Rhode Island | 13.1 |
| 5 | Delaware | 16.9 |
| 6 | Connecticut | 20.2 |
| 7 | New York | 21.8 |
| 8 | Illinois | 25.7 |
| 9 | Minnesota | 30.8 |
| 10 | Oregon | 31.0 |
New Jersey’s 2024 workplace fatality rate was 1.9 deaths per 100,000 workers, while Rhode Island recorded a rate of just 1.1. New Hampshire’s rate stood at 1.7.
Those figures demonstrate why raw fatality counts cannot be used alone to compare states. New Jersey recorded 84 worker deaths, more than Wyoming’s 37, but Wyoming’s smaller workforce resulted in a dramatically higher population-adjusted fatality rate.
Logging Workers Face the Highest Fatality Rate
Location is only one part of the workplace-safety picture. Some occupations expose individual workers to dramatically higher risks regardless of the state where they work.
Among the occupations analyzed by Anidjar & Levine, logging workers had the highest 2024 fatality rate at 110.4 deaths per 100,000 workers. Fishing and hunting workers followed at 88.8, while roofers recorded 48.7 deaths per 100,000.
Other occupations with particularly high rates included:
- Structural iron and steel workers: 37.8 deaths per 100,000 workers
- Refuse and recyclable-material collectors: 37.4
- Aircraft pilots and flight engineers: 36.7
- Construction trade workers: 35.8
- Underground mining machine operators: 35.6
Fatality rates and raw death totals, however, reveal two different dimensions of occupational danger.
Logging workers suffered 51 fatalities despite having the highest rate. By comparison, driver/sales workers and truck drivers recorded a fatality rate of 25.7 per 100,000, but accounted for 950 worker deaths, the largest total among the occupations highlighted in the study.
Construction laborers recorded another 334 deaths despite a comparatively lower fatality rate of 15.8 per 100,000 workers.
For workers, that distinction matters. Smaller occupations can expose an individual employee to an unusually high probability of a fatal incident, while large industries can produce far more deaths overall because millions of workers are exposed.
Transportation Causes Nearly 4 in 10 Workplace Deaths
The nation’s deadliest workplace hazard is not machinery, falls or fires. It is transportation.
Transportation incidents accounted for 1,937 workplace fatalities in 2024, or 38.2% of all fatal occupational injuries. Roadway incidents alone caused 1,146 deaths.
Other transportation-related deaths identified in the data included:
- 369 pedestrian incidents involving motor vehicles
- 109 aircraft incidents
- 61 pedestrian deaths in road-work zones
- 52 water-vehicle incidents
- 36 rail-vehicle incidents
The figures help explain why transportation and material-moving occupations continue to account for such a large share of worker deaths. That broad occupational group recorded 1,391 fatalities in 2024, despite a 7% decline from the previous year.
Falls, Equipment and Violence Also Kill Hundreds of Workers
Transportation is far from the only major workplace hazard.
Falls, slips and trips caused 844 deaths in 2024, including 666 fatal falls to a lower level. Another 756 workers died in contact incidents involving machinery, equipment or other objects.
Violence accounted for 733 workplace deaths, including 470 homicides. Shootings were responsible for 379 of those workplace homicides.
Exposure to harmful substances or environments resulted in another 687 deaths, although that category declined sharply from 820 fatalities a year earlier. Drug and alcohol overdoses accounted for 410 deaths, or nearly 60% of fatal harmful-exposure incidents.
The data show that workplace danger can come from several directions, including:
- Highway and vehicle crashes
- Falls from roofs, ladders and elevated work areas
- Workers being struck, caught or crushed by machinery
- Workplace violence
- Drug overdoses and other harmful exposures
- Aircraft and water-transportation incidents
Why Wyoming and Other States Rank So High
Anidjar & Levine’s state rankings also account for the types of jobs workers perform.
Across the 10 highest-risk states, 24.05% of employment was concentrated in higher-risk occupations, compared with 18.97% among the 10 lowest-risk states.
Wyoming stands out again. An estimated 27.4% of its workforce is employed in higher-risk occupational groups, with construction and extraction alone representing 8.98% of employment.
Transportation and material-moving jobs represent the largest high-risk occupational category in 47 states. Wyoming, Montana and Vermont are the exceptions, where construction and extraction comprise the largest high-risk group.
Still, workforce composition alone does not determine a state’s position.
Nevada, for example, has one of the country’s highest modeled occupational-risk mixes but ranks only 29th overall because its current workplace fatality rate is comparatively low at 2.3 deaths per 100,000 workers.
Self-Employed and Older Workers Face Higher Fatality Rates
Employment arrangements also reveal large differences in risk.
Self-employed workers recorded a workplace fatality rate of 10.8 deaths per 100,000 workers, compared with 2.9 among wage-and-salary employees.
Older Americans were another high-risk group. Workers age 65 and older recorded 824 workplace deaths and a fatality rate of 9.1 per 100,000, with deaths increasing from 757 the previous year.
These statistics do not mean age, ethnicity or employment status independently causes workplace fatalities. Occupation, industry, exposure to transportation and equipment, working conditions and other factors all affect occupational risk.
Dangerous Jobs Do Not Always Come With Higher Pay
One of the more striking findings in Anidjar & Levine’s analysis concerns compensation.
Workers in high-risk occupations in the 10 states with the greatest overall worker risk earned an average of $53,846, compared with $58,467 among the 10 lowest-risk states. That places average pay in the higher-risk group approximately 7.9% lower.
Several dangerous occupations also had average wages below $60,000:
| Occupation | Average Wage |
|---|---|
| Grounds maintenance workers | $40,080 |
| Construction laborers | $47,120 |
| Logging workers | $49,660 |
| Refuse collectors | $49,690 |
| Driver/sales workers and truck drivers | $50,390 |
| Roofers | $55,440 |
Some specialized high-risk occupations command substantially higher wages. Aircraft pilots and flight engineers averaged about $210,020, while power-line installers averaged approximately $95,320.
How the Worker Risk Index Was Calculated
Anidjar & Levine created its Worker Risk Index by converting five measures into standardized state-relative scores and combining them according to their assigned weights.
| Index Measure | Weight |
|---|---|
| Current workplace fatality rate | 40% |
| Five-year persistent fatality rate | 20% |
| Occupational mix | 20% |
| Recent fatality-rate trend | 10% |
| Self-employment exposure | 10% |
The current fatality rate receives the greatest weight, while the five-year average prevents one unusually dangerous or unusually safe year from completely determining a state’s ranking. Occupational composition captures how heavily each state’s workforce depends on jobs associated with higher fatality rates.
The resulting score is a comparative measure rather than a prediction that an individual worker will be injured or killed.
What the findings do reveal is a sizable occupational-safety divide across the country. Workers in Wyoming, Mississippi, North Dakota and other states near the top of the ranking encounter a combination of higher fatality rates and greater exposure to dangerous occupations, while states at the bottom of the index generally record substantially lower death rates.
At the job level, the same data show two versions of workplace risk: logging, fishing and roofing expose individual workers to some of the country’s highest fatality rates, while trucking and construction produce particularly large numbers of deaths because so many Americans work in those fields.
Despite a national decline in workplace deaths in 2024, more than 5,000 workers still did not return home from work that year. Anidjar & Levine’s findings show that the odds remain far from evenly distributed across occupations or across state lines.
