En analys av sambandet mellan arbetsplatsolyckor och konjunkturcykeln i Sverige

Every year in Sweden approximately 50 people die due to work related injuries. The development of non deadly injuries at work, however, has been varying. Between 1980 and 2008 it's been decreasing while, during the last 10 years, the number of injuries has instead increased. It is of interest to see why the number of occupational injuries has been increasing as well as understanding if there exists any relationship between any external, economic, factors and occupational injuries. Understanding these relationships enables further research which potentially can lead to fewer events of this kind in the future. The relationship between the business cycle and occupational injuries has been the focus of many studies since the end of the 1940's. The results, however, has been varying. While some parts of the literature has found a pro cyclical pattern, exhibiting an increasing amount of occupational injuries in upturns of the business cycle, another part has found an opposite relationship. This, counter cyclical, relationship instead display a decreasing amount of occupational injuries in business cycle upturns. By using the data of workplace accidents between 1998 and 2017 from the Swedish Work Environment Authority and two measures of the business cycle, a regressions analysis was conducted. The measures of the business cycle were gross domestic product (GDP) and notice of termination statistics. The data of workplace accidents were divided into number of accidents per 1000 workers. Moreover, the data was divided into five industry sectors, agriculture, mining, construction, manufacturing and trade respectively, to enable a comparison between them. The results indicated a pro cyclical relationship between occupational injuries and notice of termination, although only construction, manufacturing and trade displayed significant results. It was found that when the number of notices per 1000 workers increased with 1%, indicating a downward business cycle trend, the number of occupational injuries were decreasing. The regressions of GDP rendered differing results between the sectors