Workplace violence spans a wide range of behaviors, from threats and verbal abuse to physical assault and homicide.
In the
first installment of NCCI’s Workplace Violence series, we examined nonfatal workplace assaults, including trends, drivers, and demographics. The
second installment explored workplace homicides and the environments in which they occur.
In this third and final installment, we take a closer look at assaults and violent acts by other persons, beginning with the health care and social assistance sector. We also extend the analysis beyond sectors to occupational categories and incorporate the public sector, allowing us to see how industry composition, occupational mix, and ownership structure jointly influence the patterns observed in the data.
KEY FINDINGS
- In health care and social assistance:
- The assault share of all Days Away From Work (DAFW) cases doubled from 4.8% in 2011 to 9.6% in 2019
- Assault shares fell sharply in 2020 and 2021–22, not because assaults declined, but because total DAFW cases surged during the COVID-19 period, temporarily suppressing the assault share through a denominator effect
- Assault rates rose from 6.4 to 9.8 per 10,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) workers from 2011 to 2021–22, showing a substantial long-run increase in underlying assault risk
- Hospitals and nursing/residential care facilities accounted for 75.1% of violence-by-others cases (40.2% and 34.9%, respectively), with general medical and surgical hospitals alone accounting for 30.5% of the health care and social assistance total
- Assault risk is pronounced in behavioral-health and residential settings: psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals posted a rate of 138.8 cases per 10,000 FTE workers, while residential intellectual/developmental disability, mental health, and substance abuse facilities posted a rate of 60.9
- For other NAICS sectors that contribute to workplace violence, we observe:
- Increasing shares of assaults over time
- Increasing rates of assaults over time
- When the analysis expands to all ownerships and is disaggregated by occupation, protective services and education become more prominent in the distribution
- Protective services: Violence by others is concentrated in security guards for the private industry and police and corrections personnel for all ownerships
- Education: Violence by others is concentrated in elementary and secondary schools (91.2%), and the occupational category with the highest assault rate is other educational, instructional, or library occupations at 53.3 cases per 10,000 FTE workers on an all-ownership basis
Together, the three installments provide a more robust view of workplace violence, from broad assault and homicide trends to the settings and occupations where exposure is concentrated. This final article adds important context by showing how sector, occupation, and ownership lenses can change what is visible in the data.
To explore the full findings and data analysis, read the
complete report.
Connect with the authors if you have questions or want to gain additional insights.
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