Safe Work Australia counts 222 work-related fatalities in 2025, the most in its ten-year table, and NSW rose from 50 to 77

What Safe Work Australia published

The figures are in the Traumatic Injury Fatalities detailed data file for 2025, linked from Safe Work Australia’s work-related fatalities dataset page, which gives the data’s coverage as January 2003 to December 2025 and says it was last updated on 7 October 2026. This is the finalised count, not the fortnightly preliminary one. In the page’s words, At the end of the year, Safe Work Australia validates the preliminary fatalities dataset against a range of sources. It adds that Preliminary counts are usually less than finalised counts, as the finalised counts include fatalities notified through other sources.

Dataset

Traumatic Injury Fatalities (TIF), Safe Work Australia

Last updated

7 October 2026, annual

Counts

Deaths from traumatic injuries caused by work activity or exposure; not disease, suicide or commuting

2025 count

222 fatalities

2025 rate

1.51 per 100,000 workers

2024, revised

192 fatalities, 1.33 per 100,000 (188 in last year’s edition)

Who is in the count matters. The collection’s scope takes in workers and bystanders, but the explanatory notes say data on bystanders is not publicly provided on our interactive dashboards. The data file’s tables do not say either way. Last year’s file put 2024 at 188, and the Key WHS Statistics 2025 report used the same number for workers: In 2024, there were 188 workers who died from traumatic injuries while working. So the tables appear to count workers; that is our reading of the match, not a statement in the file.

The count is a ten-year high. The rate is not

Read across the file’s ten calendar years, 222 is the largest total. The nine years before it averaged 187 (our arithmetic). But the number of people working grew over the decade, and the rate tells a different story: 1.51 deaths per 100,000 workers in 2025 is up from 1.33 in 2024, and below 2016 (1.58), 2017 (1.56) and 2020 (1.57).

• 2016: 190 (rate 1.58)
• 2017: 192 (rate 1.56)
• 2018: 144 (rate 1.14)
• 2019: 193 (rate 1.49)
• 2020: 199 (rate 1.57)
• 2021: 174 (rate 1.33)
• 2022: 197 (rate 1.44)
• 2023: 201 (rate 1.42)
• 2024: 192 (rate 1.33)
• 2025: 222 (rate 1.51)

Our arithmetic puts the gap between the two measures in deaths: at 2024’s rate, the 2025 workforce implied by the file would have produced about 195 fatalities, not 222. So roughly 27 of the 30 extra deaths are more than workforce growth accounts for.

Where the extra 30 were: mostly New South Wales

The file’s state table is by where the death occurred, which the data dictionary defines as The state or territory location in which the death occurred. New South Wales rose by 27, Victoria by 12, and Queensland fell by 9.

Counts from Table 7.1 and rates per 100,000 workers from Table 7.2 of the 2025 data file, rounded by us. The file marks the ACT’s 2025 rate NP.

A second table sorts deaths by jurisdiction, with aircraft and Commonwealth cases counted separately, and splits each by whether the incident was on a public road. The dictionary defines jurisdiction as The state or territory that had jurisdictional regulatory responsibility for the fatality. Under New South Wales’s jurisdiction, deaths not on a public road went from 25 to 46, the highest of the five years that table shows. Deaths on a public road went from 16 to 21.

New South Wales, 2024

• 50 deaths where the death occurred
• 25 not on a public road, NSW jurisdiction
• 16 on a public road, NSW jurisdiction
• Rate 1.12 per 100,000 workers

New South Wales, 2025

• 77 deaths where the death occurred
• 46 not on a public road, NSW jurisdiction
• 21 on a public road, NSW jurisdiction
• Rate 1.71 per 100,000 workers

NSW’s 2025 rate is the highest the state has recorded in the file’s ten years; the next highest was 1.60 in 2017. The file does not break each state down by industry or by mechanism, so it cannot say what changed in New South Wales.

Vehicles, drivers and the industries

The rise was not concentrated in one mechanism. Among the file’s mechanism groups, being hit by moving objects went from 55 to 66, the vehicle incident category from 83 to 92 and falls from a height from 24 to 28. Being hit by falling objects, inside the first group, went from 13 to 21. But several measures to do with vehicles and driving reached the top of their ten-year range.

Vehicle incident

92 deaths; previous high 85 (2023)

Road and rail drivers

67 deaths; previous high 63 (2019)

Road transport

47 deaths; previous high 46 (2021)

Construction services

30 deaths; previous high 25 (2020)

New South Wales

77 deaths; previous high 65 (2019)

Vehicle incident, at 92, is 41 per cent of all 222 deaths, a slightly smaller share than in 2024 (83 of 192, 43 per cent; our arithmetic). It is still the largest single category by a distance, as it was when the 2025 report said Vehicle incidents continue to account for the largest proportion of fatal injuries (42% or 79 fatalities) for 2024. That 79 is 83 in the new file.

Counts from Table 1.1 and rates per 100,000 workers from Table 1.2 of the 2025 data file, rounded by us; the other eight divisions are summed by us. Table 1.2 gives the national 2025 rate as 1.52, against 1.51 in the state table; the two use different worker counts.

Agriculture’s count fell, from 46 to 38, and its rate is still the highest of any division by a wide margin, at almost 13 per 100,000 workers. Within administrative and support services, building cleaning, pest control and other support services went from 5 to 9. By age, 98 of the deaths were of people aged 55 and over, and the rate for those aged 65 and over was 5.50 per 100,000 workers (Tables 6.1 and 6.2; the age groups sum to 221, one fewer than the total, and the file does not say why).

Last year’s 188 is now 192

Every year in the file can move. The explanatory notes say historical data is updated each year as additional information from finalised coroners' reports and workers’ compensation claims becomes available. Comparing last year’s edition with this one:

2024 in last year’s file

• 188 fatalities
• 48 in New South Wales
• 79 by vehicle incident

2024 in this year’s file

• 192 fatalities
• 50 in New South Wales
• 83 by vehicle incident

Earlier years moved by one or two in each direction: 2023 went from 203 to 201, 2022 from 195 to 197. The revisions so far have been small, and they have gone both ways.

As at 9 October 2026, Safe Work Australia’s news page carried no announcement of the new data, its newest item being the 1 October start of National Safe Work Month, and its latest Key WHS Statistics report was still the 2025 edition. That report is where the agency gives its own reading of each year’s numbers.

Our read

This is our view, built on the figures above. One bad year is not a trend, and Safe Work Australia warns, in its notes, that it advises caution when drawing conclusions from calculations or changes over time based on small numbers of worker fatalities. That caution applies with force to an industry subdivision, an occupation group or a small state in a single year. It applies much less to a national total of 222 that sits 35 above the nine-year average and pushed the rate up by more than a tenth.

The first target of the Australian WHS Strategy 2023 to 2033 is A reduction in the number of worker fatalities caused by traumatic injuries of at least 30 per cent. Measured from any base year between 2016 and 2024, 2025’s count is higher, not lower, so in the strategy’s third year the number is moving the wrong way.

For a business, the useful part is what has not changed. Vehicles kill more workers than anything else, drivers are the largest occupation group among the dead, and agriculture remains by far the most dangerous industry per worker. If your people drive for work, operate mobile plant or work on farms, this file is about you. For New South Wales, a rise from 50 to 77 is the figure that most needs an explanation, and this dataset cannot give one. That question belongs to the state’s regulators.