Data + statistics
Workers who claimed compensation are three times as likely to have a long absence. Read that carefully.
In 2021-22, 45 per cent of injured Australian workers who received workers compensation had taken more than 10 days off or had not returned to work. Among injured workers who did not receive compensation the figure was 15 per cent. Exactly three times. And the distance between the two has been growing: in 2013-14 it was 21 percentage points, and by 2021-22 it was 30. That is a real and widening pattern in the national injury data, and it is not evidence that making a claim is bad for you. The difference between those two readings is the whole of this piece.
The measure
This is a supplementary indicator in Safe Work Australia’s Year 6 scorecard on the
National Return to Work Strategy, and unlike most of that report it does not come from the
workers compensation system at all. It is drawn from the
ABS Work-Related Injury Survey, and the scorecard says why it is there: it is
Another measure of return to work which encompasses all work-related injuries, not just
those on workers' compensation.
That is what makes it unusual and worth the trouble. Scheme data can only ever describe people who claimed. This survey reaches injured workers who did not, which is the only way to put the two groups beside each other.
| Injured workers who had more than 10 days off, or had not returned | 2013-14 | 2017-18 | 2021-22 |
|---|---|---|---|
| All injured workers | 20% | 19% | 25% |
| Those who received workers compensation | 34% | 37% | 45% |
| Those who did not receive compensation | 13% at the two earlier readings | 15% | |
From the supplementary indicators of the Year 6 scorecard,
sourced there to the ABS Work-Related Injury Survey. The bottom row is merged because the report
prints the year twice: it says the figure rose from 13% in 2017-18 and 2017-18 to 15% in
2021-22
, which cannot be right as written. We have shown 13 per cent as covering both earlier
readings rather than silently repairing a year the source got wrong.
Two things follow from the top two rows, and the arithmetic is ours. The compensated group rose 11 percentage points across the period and the uncompensated group rose 2. So the overall rise from 20 to 25 per cent is being driven by the compensated group, which is a subset of it.
Why this is not what it looks like
The sentence this data invites is that going through the compensation system keeps people off work longer. It is an easy sentence to write and this masthead is not going to write it, because the comparison cannot support it.
The two groups are not alike. Whether an injured worker ends up receiving compensation is not a coin toss applied to identical injuries; it depends heavily on how badly they were hurt. A worker who needs weeks off has strong reason to claim and a strong case. A worker with a sprain who is back on Monday often has neither. So the compensated group is weighted towards serious injuries before anybody measures a single day of absence, and serious injuries take longer to come back from. That alone would produce a gap of this shape with no effect from the system whatsoever.
This is ordinary selection, and it is the reason a difference between two self-selected
groups is not a finding about what the system does to people. Safe Work Australia does not claim
otherwise: the indicator is offered as
Another measure of return to work
, not as a comparison of outcomes between the two.
What the number is actually good for
Two things, and they are worth having.
It is a check on scheme data. Everything else in the scorecard describes people inside the compensation system. This says that a quarter of all injured workers now have a long absence, up from a fifth, and it counts the ones no scheme ever sees. When we reported that worker experiences in the compensation system have generally deteriorated, the obvious question was whether that was a story about the scheme or about injuries. This measure covers both populations and both have worsened, which points at something wider than scheme administration.
The widening is the part to watch. A stable gap would be well explained by selection alone. A gap that grows by nine points in eight years means something changed in at least one of the groups: the mix of injuries being claimed, the threshold at which people claim, or what happens after they do. This data cannot tell you which, and nothing else in the scorecard does either.
Our view, and it is a view: the honest use of this indicator is as a question rather than an answer. It says the two populations have drifted apart and that nobody has published why. Given the same report finds worker-reported experience of the system deteriorating on most measures, that question is worth somebody asking properly, with data that can separate injury severity from everything else. This measure cannot.
How we did this
The figures come from the supplementary indicators table of the NRTW Strategy Year 6 Key Achievements and Scorecard report, published by Safe Work Australia on 28 April 2026, read in full. That table attributes them to the ABS Work-Related Injury Survey. We have not gone behind the scorecard to the ABS survey itself, so we cannot describe its sample, its definition of a work-related injury, or its confidence intervals, and we have not implied that we can.
The percentage-point changes, the 21-point and 30-point gaps and the observation that the compensated group is driving the overall rise are our arithmetic on the published figures. The three-fold comparison is 45 against 15 in 2021-22 and is exact at the precision the report gives.
The source misprints a year in the third series, giving 2017-18 twice. We have said so and left the figure unattached to a specific earlier year rather than assuming which year was intended, because the obvious repair is a guess and this page would then carry it as a fact.
The paragraph beginning Our view
is opinion, built on the figures stated above. The
selection argument in the section above it is not opinion; it is the standard reason two
self-selected groups cannot be compared directly.
Sources
- Safe Work Australia, NRTW Strategy Year 6 Key Achievements and Scorecard report (PDF, 30 pages), published 28 April 2026, read in full: the supplementary indicators table, all three series, the attribution to the ABS Work-Related Injury Survey, the description of the indicator, and the misprinted year in the third series.
- Safe Work Australia, NRTW Strategy Year 6 Key Achievements and Scorecard report (publication page): the publication date of 28 April 2026.
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