First-Year Employees Drive 44% of Construction Injuries
Travelers analyzed 1.2 million claims and found first-year construction workers drive 44% of injuries and 47% of claim costs. That concentration reshapes your mod.
First-year employees account for 44% of construction injuries and 47% of construction claim costs, despite being a fraction of the experienced workforce (Travelers, 2026). Construction injuries average 114 missed workdays, the highest of any industry. Because NCCI's experience rating formula weights primary losses dollar for dollar, a single new-hire lost-time claim can move a mid-size contractor's mod by 5 to 10 points.
The newest person on your crew is the most expensive person on your workers' comp policy. Not the most senior. Not the one running heavy equipment. The one who started three months ago.
Travelers analyzed 1.2 million workers' compensation claims filed between 2021 and 2025. In construction, first-year employees drove 44% of injuries and 47% of claim costs (Travelers, 2026 Injury Impact Report). Those two numbers should change how you think about your experience modification rate.
The EMR (Experience Modification Rate, also called "the mod") compares your actual losses to what NCCI (the National Council on Compensation Insurance) expects for your classification and payroll size. Losses above expected push the mod above 1.00. The formula splits every claim into primary and excess components. Primary losses carry full weight. That split is why a concentration of claims among your newest workers matters more than the raw injury count suggests.
Why first-year employee construction injuries dominate the worksheet
Construction's 44% first-year injury share is the third highest of any sector, behind restaurants at 51% and small businesses at 46% (Travelers, 2026). But construction's severity stands alone. Injured construction workers miss an average of 114 days, compared to 94 in transportation, 77 in professional services, and 76 in manufacturing (Travelers, 2026).
That severity gap means construction's first-year claims aren't just frequent. They're expensive. Across all industries, first-year employees generated more than five million missed workdays over the five-year study period (Travelers, 2026). In construction, the combination of high frequency and 114-day average duration produces a loss profile that dominates the experience rating worksheet.
The pattern isn't random. A new hire on a concrete crew may have years of trade experience but zero familiarity with this site's excavation layout, this employer's fall protection protocols, or this crew's communication habits. Technical skill doesn't prevent site-specific injuries. The knowledge gap does.
How one new-hire claim moves the mod
NCCI's formula assigns every claim two components. Primary losses, the first portion of each claim, carry 100% weight. Excess losses, everything above that threshold, carry only a fraction. A first-year employee's lost-time claim generating 114 days of missed work creates substantial primary loss.
On a mid-size contractor running $3 million to $5 million in annual payroll, that primary loss alone can push the mod 5 to 10 points. Five mod points on a $400,000 annual premium is $20,000. Ten points is $40,000. And the claim stays on the worksheet for three full policy years after the year it occurred.
The real cost of one new-hire injury isn't the medical bill. It's the premium surcharge that compounds over four renewal cycles.
The two-front problem: new hires and aging workers
The Travelers data reveals a second pressure point. Workers aged 60 and older represent 16% of all lost-time claims (Travelers, 2026). They miss an average of 97 days when injured. That's 17 days longer than the overall average of 80.
Slips, trips, and falls account for roughly 39% of claims among workers 60 and older, about 15 percentage points higher than other age groups (Travelers, 2026). Falls also rank among the leading causes of the costliest claims (those exceeding $250,000) across all industries in the study.
Construction workforces are aging. What the data quantifies is the claim profile that aging produces: longer durations, higher severity, and a specific injury type that generates large primary losses. A contractor with a crew that skews both young and old faces mod pressure from both ends of the experience spectrum.
The injuries look different. New hires get hurt because they don't yet know the site, the equipment, or the rhythm of the crew. Older workers get hurt when the physical demands catch up. Both produce the same result on the worksheet: primary losses that push the mod higher.
What frequency and severity trends mean for your renewal
The broader workers' comp market tells the same story from the carrier side. Injury frequency keeps declining, but the injuries that do happen are more severe and more expensive (NCCI, AIS 2026). Carriers price severity trends into renewals. A contractor whose worksheet shows a cluster of new-hire lost-time claims or a string of fall injuries among senior workers fits the severity profile carriers are watching.
This isn't about one bad quarter. The Travelers dataset spans five years and 1.2 million claims. The structural pattern, nearly half of construction injuries concentrated in first-year employees, tells carriers that your loss history reflects your hiring cycle as much as your safety program.
What an audit would check
An audit would examine whether claims on the worksheet are correctly valued, whether reserves reflect current medical status, and whether classification codes assigned to new-hire payroll match the work actually performed. In our reviews of Southeast contractor worksheets, misclassified new-hire payroll is one of the more common errors we find. A clean worksheet won't prevent injuries, but it ensures you aren't paying for misallocated losses on top of real ones.
If your mod has climbed and your payroll mix has shifted toward new hires or an aging crew, send us your worksheet for a free review.