Numbers of cases are likely to be higher in industries with the most
employees, but the incidence rate helps to identify those who are the
poorest performers. Table 4 shows that while the number of claims
was high for the retail industry, its incidence rate was much lower
compared to other “high claims industries” such as manufacturing,
construction, transport & storage and health & community services.
In contrast, although Ag, forest, fish industry reported a relatively
low number of body stressing cases, its incidence rate was among
the five highest incidence rates reported for 2003. When the
incidence rates of four priority industries were considered by subcategories,
quite significant differences between some sub-category
became apparent (see Table 5).
The highest incidence rate was reported for the storage subcategory.
The next highest rates were in the Food, Beverage and
Tobacco manufacturing followed by the Wood and Paper Products and
Non-Metallic Mineral sub-categories. Clearly, prevention interventions
targeting these sub-categories have the greatest potential for
yielding significant benefits.