2025 Workplace Injury Review

Couriers and messengers lead the industry ranking with a median total recordable incident rate (TRIR) of 7.33, followed by postal services at 5.97 and general merchandise retailers at 4.82. The courier DART rate—the rate of cases involving days away, restricted duty or job transfer—is also high, at 6.03. The operational concern is not just that injuries occur, but that they can disrupt the workforce needed to deliver the service.

The demands of last-mile delivery help explain why this deserves attention. Research published in the Journal of Safety Research in 2025 describes a job that combines driving, parcel handling and movement through unpredictable environments. Delivery workers repeatedly shift between vehicles, packages and customer locations; each transition creates a different physical demand. The authors also point to the pressures associated with e-commerce growth and delivery-speed expectations.

Healthcare presents a different setting but a related challenge. Hospitals and nursing and residential care also feature prominently in the chart. NIOSH identifies patient handling as the greatest musculoskeletal risk factor for healthcare workers, including lifting, moving and repositioning people. For safety leaders, the implication is practical: training needs to be supported by readily available lifting equipment and workflows that make its use routine.

The management priority: Treat high-touch physical work as an operational design issue. Examine how a parcel, a product or a patient moves through the process—and where employees must compensate for poor access, difficult positioning or unavailable assistance.

Ergonomics is the largest category in the hazard ranking, with 242,903 tagged records. Overexertion, slips and trips, material handling, and contact with objects also appear among the leading categories. Together, these priorities point toward the design of tasks and movement—not simply whether employees have received another reminder to work safely.

The Government Accountability Office’s review of warehouses and last-mile delivery identifies overexertion and bodily reaction as a major hazard, including the demands of lifting, bending and working while fatigued. That places task demands and recovery time squarely in the safety conversation. An ergonomics program that is disconnected from workload, equipment access and the organization of work is unlikely to address the full problem.

The commercial significance is equally clear. Liberty Mutual’s 2025 Workplace Safety Index ranks overexertion involving outside sources as the leading cause of serious workplace injury costs, largely linked to manual material handling. It places same-level falls second. That reinforces the case for investing in less forceful handling, better task layouts and safer movement through the workplace.

The management priority: Bring operations, engineering and safety teams into the same discussion. Start with the tasks that demand the most force, the most repetition or the most awkward movement, then evaluate changes to equipment and workflow alongside training and PPE.

Soft tissue injuries are the largest category shown, with 298,320 cases. Surface and flesh wounds follow at 220,568. The prominence of soft tissue cases makes strain prevention a substantial opportunity for employers whose workers lift, carry, push, pull or perform repeated movements.

The real-world mechanisms are familiar. Forceful handling places demands on muscles and joints; repeated tasks can add exposure throughout a shift; awkward reaches and positions can make a routine job harder on the body. The GAO review of ergonomic hazards connects overexertion with musculoskeletal conditions such as back pain and tendonitis, while NIOSH’s patient-handling guidance emphasizes assistive lifting devices as a practical way to reduce strain in care settings.

For employers, the opportunity is to move beyond a response that begins only after a worker reports pain. Repositioning frequently handled items, improving access to lifting aids and reducing difficult reaches are concrete ways to address physical demands before they become an injury. In healthcare, that means making assistive equipment available where care actually takes place—not merely owning it.

The management priority: Make physical effort visible during routine task reviews. Ask where workers exert the most force, repeat the same movement or work in constrained positions, and prioritize redesign rather than relying on individual technique alone.

Overexertion while moving or manipulating objects is the largest event category shown, at 162,352 cases. Contact with non-running objects or equipment accounts for 112,726, while same-level slips, trips, stumbles and falls account for 88,678. These are distinct problems, but they often need attention in the same operational spaces: the places where people, loads and equipment interact.

For handling-related events, useful questions concern load weight, reach distance, grip and the availability of assistance. For contact events, attention shifts to clearance, layout and separation from equipment. The practical goal is to reduce the amount of physical effort and improvisation needed to complete a routine task safely.

Falls require a similarly broad response. NIOSH-backed fall-prevention research identifies interacting factors including surface conditions, lighting, footwear, fatigue and task demands. That helps explain why a warning sign or a housekeeping campaign alone may be insufficient. Floor conditions, clear walking routes, suitable footwear and the way workers carry loads need to be considered together.

The management priority: Review the work at the point of movement. Walk the routes, observe the transfers and test whether equipment and layouts reduce handling demands in practice. The aim is to make safer work the straightforward way to complete the job.