By Jane M. Von Bergen

– The nation’s oldest workers are dying on the job — losing their lives at more than triple the rate of all workers.

The U.S. Labor Department reported last week that 1,691 workers over the age of 55 died in 2014 – the highest number ever recorded for this group of workers and more than one in three of the 4,821 people killed on the job that year.

Workers over age 65 were particularly affected, with 10.7 per 100,000 workers killed on the job, compared to the all-worker injury rate of 3.4 per 100,000.

The statistic doesn’t surprise Barbara Rahke, director of PhilaPOSH, an advocacy group that works to promote safe conditions on the job.

On Friday, mirroring similar events around the country, PhilaPOSH will hold its annual workers’ memorial day event to honor those killed on the job in the region.

“Our oldest is 86 – a farmer,” she said. “There are lots of people in their 60s on our list. It’s always shocking to me how many people are working beyond retirement age. People aren’t doing those jobs unless they have to.”

In 2014, 4,821 people were killed on the job, up five percent from the 4,585 reported in 2013 and the highest number since 2008, when 5,214 were killed.

Driving the numbers in part were deaths in private construction, which grew by 9 percent to 899 – the largest number of construction deaths since 2008, when construction employment started its recessionary plunge. Since its low point in January 2011, construction employment had risen 16 percent by December 2014 and is up 23 percent as of March.

The largest group, 41 percent, are killed in transportation incidents – truck drivers in accidents, workers struck by trains or cars, pilots killed in plane crashes, or crew members killed on boats.

Falls kill 14 percent. Contact with objects or equipment takes 10 percent of lives and homicides account for eight percent of all workers who die. Fires and explosions cost three percent their lives.

Fatalities in oil and gas extraction rose to 144 in 2014, the highest recorded.

Men are generally more likely to die on the job, with 4,454 losing their lives at work compared to 367 women. Nearly one in five women who lose their lives at work die from a homicide, with the greatest threat from a relative or domestic partner. Men are more likely to be killed during a robbery.

Next Friday’s event concludes with a ceremony at Penn’s Landing on the Delaware River where the names of the dead are read and flowers are tossed into the water in their honor.

A large group of railway workers are expected to attend to remember two of their colleagues who were struck and killed by an Amtrak train outside Philadelphia on April 2. The ceremony will take place at about 11 a.m., following a short parade on Christopher Columbus Boulevard.

Source – http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20160423_More_older_workers_are_dying_on_the_job.html