From WisPolitics.com/WisBusiness.com …
— Wisconsin’s rate of workers being hospitalized due to severe workplace injuries is 72% above the national average, according to an analysis by High Rise Financial.
This California-based legal funding company this week issued a report detailing workplace injury hospitalization trends across the country. It found Wisconsin had 9.13 workers hospitalized per 100,000 workers annually over a 10-year period ending in 2025.
That’s well above the national average of 5.3 per 100,000, averaging 274.3 hospitalizations per year out of the state’s workforce of about 3 million people.
Report authors note “the workday begins early” for many workers in Wisconsin, from the state’s dairy plants to foundries in Milwaukee as well as paper mills and shipyards.
“For most workers, the shift ends the way it began, with a drive home and a plan to return the next morning,” they wrote. “For others, a slip on an icy dock, a hand caught in machinery, or a load that shifts without warning turns an ordinary day into one that ends in a hospital bed.”
Wisconsin’s rate is also 21% higher than neighboring Illinois’ rate of 7.52 per 100,000.
Authors also emphasize the “heavy toll by volume” Wisconsin faces, as it had 3,107 workers hospitalized due to workplace injuries between 2015 and 2025. That’s the eighth-highest number in the country and more than 42 other states, including 11 that have larger workforces.
By comparison, some other nearby Midwest states have far lower rates of workplace injuries leading to hospitalization.
The four states with the lowest rates include Indiana at No. 50 with 0.11 hospitalizations per 100,000 workers, Michigan at No. 49 with 0.12, Iowa at No. 48 with 0.18 and Minnesota at No. 47, also with 0.18.
Meanwhile, North Dakota came in at No. 1 on the list with the highest rate in the country, 16.22 per 100,000 workers. It has a far smaller workforce than others in the top 10, with just over 400,000, and its average number of workers hospitalized was 65.5 per year.
The report is based on data from OSHA Severe Injury Reports between Jan. 1, 2025, and Nov. 30, 2025.
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