Today’s post comes from guest author Tom Domer from The Domer Law Firm. As a continuation of last week’s post, it dispels some of the realities that were true decades ago when it came to workers’ compensation and “older” workers. And you’ll want to read all the way to the end to see who’s considered an “older” worker in this article!

Last week, we started talking about some of the NCCI’s interesting conclusions about the implications of “Baby Boomers” in the workplace (see Part 1 of this article). In today’s post, we discuss these conclusions in more detail. The frequency of injury has steadily declined since the mid-1990s, with age group differences in frequency largely eliminated.  The decline in frequency has occurred for all age groups.  The differences among age groups in the early 1990s had almost completely disappeared by 2010.

A longstanding worker’s compensation maxim that “younger workers have much higher injury rates” is no longer true.  For example: the injury rate for workers age 55-64 was 16% lower than the frequency for all workers in the mid-1990s but actually 1% higher in 2010, indicating that the differences have clearly narrowed.

Lastly, in terms of severity of claims, older workers certainly cost more, primarily due to higher wages and increased medical costs for older workers.  The severity of medical costs Continue reading →