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Fatalities

Work-related fatalities are deaths that occur as a result of injury from work. This data includes workers who die from injuries while working and members of the public who die as a result of someone else’s work activity. It excludes deaths from natural causes and self-harm. The data is unable to include deaths from occupational disease (see work-related health). This is a single work-related fatalities dataset, combining notifications to WorkSafe and data from other agencies. It provides a whole-of-system picture of New Zealand’s health and safety performance. Note: Reporting is paused while we update our system. Information may be requested under the Official Information Act during this pause: www.worksafe.govt.nz/contact-us/oia-request/

Last updated 06 Sep 2023

Fatalities from Jul 2022 to Jun 2023

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The number of acute work-related fatalities. It can be broken down by detailed industry, region, age group, accident type and whether the person was working at the time of the accident.

Limits of the data
The information in this report comes from two sources: 

  1.  WorkSafe New Zealand Fatalities Register:
 Includes information based on confirmed fatal work-related incidents reported to WorkSafe. 

2. Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) claims:
  • Includes information based on accepted ACC claims for work-related fatalities.  
  • This can include work-related fatalities that come under the Maritime New Zealand, Civil Aviation Authority, and New Zealand Police jurisdictions. 

This data takes time to stabilise. We recommend applying a three month lag to the fatality number.

  • Employment data for fatality rates are based on Linked Employer-Employee Data (LEED). There is an 18 month lag on this data. We assume that employment this year is unchanged from last year in order to estimate fatality rates for this year.
  • A single fatality may have several accident types.
  • Averages have been rounded to 1 decimal place. A value of ‘0’ indicates a value that has been rounded to ‘0.0’.
  • The AFF2017 variable uses the Australia and New Zealand Standard Industry Classification (2006) system, but alters the reporting levels of the Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing industry to provide more detail.
  • Data quality has improved over time so caution is advised when interpreting the data.