The Big I Virginia Winter 2022-23

There were over 65 million new hires in 2019, so this increase an important concept regarding our method. Our relative
is large
Introduction
in absolute terms, but it led to a modest increase in risk measure is a combination of two components:
the share of short-tenured workers in 2021. Because hiring
The Great Reshuffle is reshaping the US labor market. Unemployment • How much more is historically likely a short-tenured low, but labor worker force to be
rates in the first half of 2022 are very close to the 2021
average, participation we estimate is still the lower overall than share the pre-pandemic of short-tenured rate. Labor injured shortages than have a full-tenured led to wage worker growth, while especially performing
the same task
workers strong in 2022 among to date low-wage remains workers elevated and near in sectors 2021 levels. like Leisure and Hospitality.
• How hazardous are short-tenured workers’ versus fulltenured
the time workers’ of this average writing—about job tasks 50 million quits a
What Quit is rates the jumped relative in injury the middle risk of for 2021 and remain high at
short-tenured year, almost 10 workers? million more than pre-pandemic averages. For Many in-person workers service are sectors, new to their full-tenured jobs. Some workers of these are
To measure are moving the effect from one of an similar influx of job short-tenured to another, workers but others usually are changing doing similar industries tasks or (or occupations. least similarly At the hazardous same
on time, frequency, there we are must a large know number not only of new how remote many more workers. tasks) Many to people short-tenured left the office workers. at COVID’s For example, onset; nurses there in has
short-tenured been a trickle workers back, there representing are, but also a massive how much change more in the hospitals amount and of nursing remote homes work compared and sales associates to before in the retail
likely they are to sustain a workplace injury. Thus, we next stores typically perform similar job tasks at both short and
pandemic.
estimate the relative injury risk of short-tenured workers full tenure.
and How full-tenured do such 4 workers. large changes in the labor market impact Conversely, workers compensation two sectors stand injury out frequency? in this chart The for magnitude having
This of estimation these impacts uses two relies data on sources. the interaction of three factors: very atypical relative risks. These are sectors which have an
• Historical estimates of short-tenured worker shares especially strong relationship between worker tenure and
taken • from How the much CPS more supplement or less likely on worker are short-tenured tenure work remote tasks typically workers performed to be injured by short- than other tenured workers? versus
discussed • How in the much last has section. the share of such workers changed? full-tenured workers.
• Annual • How estimates has the by sector mix of the of the share workforce of injured changed In Wholesale during the Trade, pandemic? short-tenured workers are nearly
workers who have less than one year of tenure,
published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Survey of
Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII). 5
These data allow us to estimate how much more (or less)
likely a short-tenured worker is to be injured than a fulltenured
worker, assuming the two work similar number of
work hours.6 The results are shown below.
Short-tenured workers have a much higher injury frequency
than their full-tenured counterparts, approximately twice
as high or more in most sectors. Short-tenured workers’
comparative injury frequency is not quite as high in several
major in-person service sectors, including Leisure and
Hospitality, Health Care and Social Assistance, and Retail
Trade. Since these are on a full-time equivalent worker
(FTE) basis, these relative risks assume the same number
of hours worked per employee.
The difference in relative risks between sectors illustrates
16 THE BIG I VIRGINIA WINTER 2022-23
three times more likely to suffer injury than full-tenured
workers. This is strongly related to occupation. The two
most common occupations within Wholesale Trade are
salespersons and freight and stock movers. Sales activities
in Wholesale Trade often require a lot of sector- specific
knowledge, thus sales staff in the sector tend to be fulltenured.7
Movers in Wholesale Trade are more likely to be
short-tenured and have more physically demanding and
hazardous jobs than the higher-tenured salespersons.
Information is the only sector in which short-tenured
workers are less likely to suffer injuries than full-tenured
workers. Here, the relationship between tenure and
hazardous occupations, so pronounced in Wholesale
Trade, is reversed.
Information is a mixture of disparate subsectors including
publishing, motion pictures, data processing and hosting,
and telecommunications. Among these subsectors,
telecommunication workers—including equipment repairers
and telecom line installers—have the highest median tenure
and the highest share of hazardous occupations.
Our relative risk measure comes with two caveats. First, the
short-tenured share of injuries versus employment come
from different sources, so there is potential for mismatch
between the datasets. Second, there is no way to adjust
for the fact that short-tenured workers within a sector often
have different job tasks than full-tenured workers. Our
result represents a combination of differences in injury rate
for differing job duties (for workers of a similar tenure), as
well as the tenure-driven differences in actual likelihood of
injury for the same tasks.