Aging Workforce, Rising Mod: What 97-Day Recoveries Cost Contractors

Construction injury frequency keeps falling. NCCI (the National Council on Compensation Insurance) has documented the decline for over a decade. But an aging workforce creates a quieter counter-trend: the injuries that do happen are more severe, the recoveries take longer, and the workers' comp mod carries the cost forward for three years.

When a 62-year-old carpenter misses 97 days instead of the 80-day average, the gap isn't just extra indemnity payments. It's a bigger number on the experience modification rate (EMR) worksheet, and it stays there for the full experience period.

The EMR formula splits each claim into primary losses and excess losses, with primary losses carrying full weight in the calculation. What matters for this discussion: anything that increases claim size hits the mod harder than a larger count of smaller claims. Older workers produce bigger claims.

Aging workforce injury frequency: the age curve has flipped

Workers aged 25 to 34 have the lowest injury frequency in the workers' comp system, a pattern confirmed across years of NCCI demographic research (NCCI, 2024). Past 45, it ticks up. Past 65, it climbs sharply. Workers in the 65+ bracket saw frequency rise 14% cumulatively from 2015 to 2019 (NCCI, 2024), even as every other age group continued to decline.

Frequency alone doesn't tell the mod story, though. Severity does.

The Travelers 2026 Injury Impact Report, drawn from 1.2 million claims filed between 2021 and 2025, found that workers age 60 and older average 97 lost workdays per injury. The overall average across all ages is 80 days (Travelers, 2026). Slips, trips, and falls account for roughly 40% of injuries among the 60+ group, compared to about 25% for younger workers. These aren't claims that resolve in six weeks.

Seventeen extra recovery days may sound modest. On the mod worksheet, the math compounds. When a claim climbs from $40,000 to $55,000 in incurred value because recovery stretched past projection, it can cross the split point between primary and excess losses. Every dollar in the primary bucket carries full weight.

How recovery duration shifts the mod math

Construction amplifies the age-severity connection. Medical severity rose 13% between accident year 2023 and 2024 (NCCI SOL Guide, 2025). That's the largest single-year jump among all industry groups, and more than half of the top 10 construction class codes saw double-digit increases in the same period. When rising medical costs combine with longer recovery durations on older-worker claims, the incurred values compound.

The frequency-versus-severity dynamic matters because frequency is doing the industry a favor right now. Construction saw nearly a 7% drop in claim frequency between AY 2023 and AY 2024 (NCCI, 2025). Fewer claims, but each one costs more. For contractors with aging crews, the per-claim severity increase outpaces the frequency benefit on the worksheet. Your mod doesn't care that you had fewer accidents. It cares about the dollar value of the ones you had.

This isn't a 2030 workforce problem

The median age of a construction worker in the U.S. is 42 (NAHB analysis of ACS data, 2023). Roughly 40% of the construction workforce falls between ages 45 and 64 (BLS, 2024). Workers 55 and older now represent more than 22% of construction employment, up from about 19% in 2015. By 2029, NCCI projects 16.5 million workers age 65 and over in the total U.S. labor force, a 55% increase from 2019 (NCCI, 2024).

The experience mod uses a three-year trailing window. A claim that occurs in 2027 shows up on worksheets for policy years 2028, 2029, and 2030. If your crew's average age is climbing now, the mod impact is being calculated today. You won't see it until your next worksheet drops.

In our reviews of Southeast contractor worksheets, one pattern stands out: lost-time claims on workers past 50 carry reserves set to industry-average recovery durations, not age-adjusted ones. The reserve drives the incurred value on the worksheet. When the actual recovery outlasts the projection, the claim develops upward, and the mod follows.

For Southeast contractors running subcontractor crews that average 45 and older, this isn't a workforce planning exercise. It's a mod calculation already in motion.

What an audit would check

An audit looks at whether claim reserves on the worksheet reflect actual recovery timelines or age-blind benchmarks. The primary and excess split matters, especially on longer-duration claims where small changes in incurred value can cross thresholds. Classification mix and the Expected Loss Rate (ELR) baseline get checked too. The wrong starting class distorts the mod before a single claim enters the picture.

Send us your NCCI worksheet and we'll tell you whether your claim reserves and class codes reflect the crew you actually have on the ground.