Safety Never Sleeps

There’s no question we take electrical safety seriously at EC&M. As one of the most important issues facing our audience on a daily basis, workplace safety is a topic we cover year-round across our print magazine, website, e-newsletters, podcasts, videos, and social media. In recognition of National Electrical Safety Month led by the Electrical Safety Foundation International (ESFI), we dedicate our May issue exclusively to all things electrical safety.

No matter what vertical market you work in or role you hold in the electrical industry, everyone shares one common goal: to reduce electrically related injuries and fatalities and bring all workers home safe and sound at the end of each workday. At a time when our industry continues to navigate an ongoing skilled labor shortage, doing more with less has become a way of life, which means protecting workers’ physical and mental health on the job has become even more critical. 

One statistic I came across recently particularly struck me. It was a finding from data released by Travelers, one of the country’s largest workers’ compensation insurers: Nearly half of all construction injuries involved workers in their first year on the job (44%), driving 47% of all construction workers’ compensation costs. In its 2026 Injury Impact Report, the company analyzed data from more than 1.2 million workers’ compensation claims from 2021 to 2025. This report finds that even as workplace injury rates decline, the injuries that do occur are growing more complex and taking longer to heal — a trend driven by an aging workforce (10% of injured workers were aged 60 and older) and the disproportionate vulnerability of first-year employees. Granted, this stat includes all construction workers. So I wondered how those trends might translate specifically to electrical work. 

In March, ESFI unveiled its annual findings at the IEEE Electrical Safety Workshop based on information collected on fatal and non-fatal occupational electrical injuries from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Occupational Safety and Health Association (OSHA) — the most recent data set covers 2011 through 2024, including biennial injury data from 2023 and 2024. Between 2011 and 2024, there were a total of 2,070 workplace fatalities involving electricity, according to the BLS. The most common causes of these deaths stemmed from overhead power line contact (49%); unexpected contact with electricity (20%); accidental contact with nearby energized equipment (12%); working on energized equipment or parts (4%); ground faults (4%); and arc flash (2%). Some of the key data points and trends from the ESFI report, which is based on analysis of thousands of OSHA 170 form reports, include: 

• 2024 marked the lowest rate of electrical fatalities since 2020, with 0.09 per 100,000 workers. The overall workplace fatality rate across all causes was 3.41 per 100,000 workers in 2024.
• The utility industry had the highest rate of electrical fatalities between 2011 to 2024, with 0.75 fatalities per 100,000 workers; construction had 0.73 fatalities and natural resources and mining had 0.33 fatalities.
• 70% of workplace electrical fatalities occurred in non-electrical occupations.
• The construction industry had the highest number of electrical fatalities.
• Latino workers have a disproportionately high rate of electrical fatalities in the workplace.

Take some time and read through all of the great safety articles our May issue has to offer, which includes pieces on the most effective fall protection strategies, why safety culture matters so much, words of wisdom from leading industry safety experts in the field based on near-miss experiences, 2026 NEC revisions that affect safety the most,  and how modern monitoring and AI are changing electrical safety by closing the data gap.

The lede of Freelancer Tim Kridel’s feature on strategies for maximizing job-site safety captures what’s truly at stake in electrical safety and why the same types of preventable accidents continue to occur. He writes, “Experience is a great way to avoid unnecessary risks. It’s also a great way to take unnecessary risks because if you can do something in your sleep, you might be sleepwalking into danger.”

It’s no surprise, then, that one word kept surfacing in Kridel’s interviews with safety and risk-management experts: complacency. Keeping electrical safety top of mind — and resisting the urge to let your guard down — may be one of the most important steps you can take to help prevent avoidable injuries and fatalities.