‘Equal pay day’ this year is April 12; the next ‘equal occupational fatality day’ will be in the year 2027

From Mark Perry.

"Every year the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) publicizes its “Equal Pay Day” to bring public attention to the gender pay gap. According to the NCPE, “Equal Pay Day” will fall this year on April 12, and allegedly represents how far into 2017 the average woman will have to continue working to earn the same income that the average man will earn this year. Inspired by Equal Pay Day, I introduced “Equal Occupational Fatality Day” in 2010 to bring public attention to the huge gender disparity in work-related deaths every year in the United States. “Equal Occupational Fatality Day” tells us how many years into the future women will be able to continue to work before they would experience the same number of occupational fatalities that occurred for men in the previous year.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released data last fall on workplace fatalities for 2014, and a new “Equal Occupational Fatality Day” can now be calculated. As in previous years, the chart above shows the significant gender disparity in workplace fatalities in 2014: 4,320 men died on the job (92.3% of the total) compared to only 359 women (7.7% of the total). The “gender occupational fatality gap” in 2014 was considerable — more than 12 men died on the job last year for every woman who died while working.

Based on the BLS data for 2014, the next “Equal Occupational Fatality Day” will occur about 11 years from now ­­– on January 12, 2027. That date symbolizes how far into the future women will be able to continue working before they experience the same loss of life that men experienced in 2014 from work-related deaths. Because women tend to work in safer occupations than men on average, they have the advantage of being able to work for more than a decade longer than men before they experience the same number of male occupational fatalities in a single year.

Economic theory tells us that the “gender occupational fatality gap” explains part of the “gender pay gap” because a disproportionate number of men work in higher-risk, but higher-paid occupations like coal mining (almost 100 % male), fire fighters (94.3% male), police officers (87.6% male), correctional officers (71.4% male), logging (94.6% male), refuse collectors (91.4%), truck drivers (94.2%), roofers (99.5% male), highway maintenance (98.5%), commercial fishing (100%) and construction (97.4% male); see BLS data here. The table above shows that for the ten most dangerous occupations in 2014 based on fatality rates per 100,000 workers, men represented more than 91% of the workers in those occupations for all of the ten occupations except for farming, which is 76.2% male.

On the other hand, women far outnumber men in relatively low-risk industries, often with lower pay to partially compensate for the safer, more comfortable indoor office environments in occupations like office and administrative support (72.9% female), education, training, and library occupations (74.1% female), and healthcare (74.2% female). The higher concentrations of men in riskier occupations with greater occurrences of workplace injuries and fatalities suggest that more men than women are willing to expose themselves to work-related injury or death in exchange for higher wages. In contrast, women more than men prefer lower risk occupations with greater workplace safety, and are frequently willing to accept lower wages for the reduced probability of work-related injury or death.

Bottom Line: Groups like the NCPE use “Equal Pay Day” to promote a goal of perfect gender pay equity, probably not realizing that they are simultaneously advocating an increase in the number of women working in higher-paying, but higher-risk occupations like fire-fighting, roofing, construction, farming, and coal mining. The reality is that a reduction in the gender pay gap would come at a huge cost: several thousand more women will be killed each year working in dangerous occupations.

Here’s a question I pose for the NCPE every year: Closing the “gender pay gap” can really only be achieved by closing the “occupational fatality gap.” Would achieving the goal of perfect pay equity really be worth the loss of life for thousands of additional women each year who would die in work-related accidents?"