At least one time in your life you’ve sung along with the Merle Haggard song, Take This Job and Shove It at the top of your lungs. We’ve all been there. It’s a good cocktail party conversation starter: What’s the worst job you ever had?
Some of us have better reason to complain about their jobs than others because their workplaces aren’t just a grind – they’re downright dangerous.
Bloomberg put together some slick, interactive graphs of death rates by job type – and some of the most dangerous jobs may surprise you. Everyone agrees that firefighters and police officers put their lives on the line every day at work – but did you know that your garbage collector is four times more likely to die on the job than a firefighter?
Here are some other surprisingly common but dangerous jobs.
Loggers and Fishers
Since 2006, an average of about 97 loggers died per 100,000 workers. What’s worse is that they don’t get paid very much for their jobs – about $34,000 on average. Fishers are in the same boat as loggers, with over 135 deaths per 100,000 workers and only an average salary of $35,000.
For comparison, firefighters make $45,600 on average and their jobs are much safer (only about 8 deaths per 100,000).
People Who Drive for a Living
People who drive for the better part of their jobs – including taxi drivers, chauffeurs, truckers, or salespeople – put themselves at risk whenever they put their foot on the pedal. Earning only $35,000 annually, the mortality rate for truckers is about 24 per 100,000 workers. That’s a small salary for so much risk. Taxi and chauffeur drivers make less than $23,000 per year and die at the rate of about 18 per 100,000.
Animal Care Workers
Did you want to be a veterinarian when you were a kid? Maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t end up as a vet, because it’s one of the top ten most dangerous jobs. People who work with animals face physical danger from the animals but they can also be prone to emotional burnout, especially when their work involves euthanizing the critters they cared for. What’s worse is they don’t get paid very much for their heartache – the median annual salary of animal caretakers is about $20,000.
Gives you something to think about, doesn’t it? Maybe the ol’ 9-to-5 routine isn’t so bad after all.
Is your 9-to-5 dangerous? If you’ve been injured on the job, talk to our personal injury or worker’s compensation lawyers.