Social work named the UK’s ‘riskiest’ industry
In a series of unfortunate events, new research highlights the social work sector has the most stressed and depressed employees of any profession.
To conduct the research, which was announced yesterday, experts looked into injury and illness rates for workers across UK industries from the last three years.
Following this, experts found that human health and social work activities ranks as the riskiest industry in the UK, reaching a combined score of 8.22/10 for risk. In addition, this sector also has the highest rate of workplace illness of all industries at an average of 6,860 incidents per 100,000 workers each year.
Against this backdrop, experts, who work at Money.co.uk, likewise discovered that social work has the highest rate of incidences of illness from stress, depression, or anxiety, at a shocking rate of 3,530 per 100,000 workers since 2021.
‘For most industries in the UK, their workplace environments are safe and secure. However, in other industries, burnout, stress, and anxiety can be more common,’ Kyle Eaton, one of the researchers involved in the study said. ‘The human health and social work industry was revealed as the most risky industry in our analysis, resulting from the severe rates of illness caused or made worse by stress, depression or anxiety resulting from these jobs.’
As well as unveiling that social care can be quite a dangerous industry to work in, the research further showed that agriculture, forestry, and fishing not only has the highest prevalence of non-fatal injury, but it also has the highest prevalence of deadly injuries.
Within the last three years there have been a total of 21 deaths in the sector.
Furthermore, public administration and defence and compulsory social security was found to have the third highest combined risk score of UK industries at six out of 10. This industry has the second-highest prevalence of workplace illness at 5,350 per 100,000 workers and the second-highest prevalence of stress, depression, and anxiety at 3,260 per 100,000 workers.
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