Wisconsin Worker's Compensation Dashboard

This dashboard uses Worker's Compensation data to show trends, rates and counts for reported work-related injuries and deaths. The Worker's Compensation claims presented on this dashboard only include indemnity claims reported by insurance carriers to the Worker's Compensation Division at the Department of Workforce Development (DWD) for workers ages 18 or older. Medical-only claims and claims for minors ages 12-17 are not included in this dashboard.

Return to the Occupational Health Data and Publications Page

How to use the dashboard

There are two main views in this dashboard. The views are: injuries and costs. To navigate between views, click the dark bar at the lower right. Details for using each view are listed below.

Contents

  • Annual distribution of claims
  • Payment status: the percent of claims each year that were paid, denied or deemed not to have lost time
  • Age and sex breakdown of claimants
  • Number of claims (a single worker can have more than one claim)
  • Number of injured workers
  • Number of work-related deaths starting in 2017 (See notes on work-related fatalities.)

How to filter data

The filter controls on each page are located near the top. You can filter by clicking:

  • Drop-down menus at the top of the page
  • Blue bars inside the figures
  • Male or female

Filters toggle on and off; to clear a filter, click the same selection again to remove it.

Helpful note: if you hover over a data point with a filter available, the tooltip will remind you of the filter options.

Be advised: not all sectors employ people in all possible occupations, so it is possible to select a combination of sector and major occupation that returns no results.

General data suppression rules employed on this dashboard will suppress any category with fewer than five (5) claims from the visualization. This is done for confidentiality reasons.

Contents

The cost page displays payments received by workers for:

  • Lost time
  • Permanent partial disability
  • Permanent total disability
  • Other indemnity (any indemnity that doesn't fit in a different payment category)
  • Death benefits (from 2017 on)
  • Different body parts injured
  • Cause of the injury
  • Nature of the injury
  • Costs by detailed industry and occupation

How to filter data

The filter controls on each page are located near the top. You can filter by clicking:

  • Drop-down menus at the top of the page
  • Blue bars inside the figures
  • Male or female

Filters toggle on and off; to clear a filter, click the same selection again to remove it.

Helpful note: if you hover over a data point with a filter available, the tooltip will remind you of the filter options.

FAQ about the data

Industry: coded according to the 2012 the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code. Industry information was obtained from the employer information in the Unemployment Insurance data.

Occupation: presented as standard occupation classification (SOC) codes using the 2010 scheme.

The standard occupation code is obtained by using the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Industry and Occupation Computerized Coding System (NIOCCS).

The claim rate, expressed as indemnity claims per 1000 full-time equivalent positions, is the number of indemnity claims reported by 1000 full-time equivalent estimates.

Claim rate (per 1,000 FTE) = (1000*Number of indemnity claims)/(Full-time equivalent estimates)

The Wisconsin full-time equivalent (FTE) estimates were derived from American Community Survey (ACS) data extracted from Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS). We applied the 30% relative standard error cut-off to exclude any unreliable estimates.

  • COVID-19 claim: We identified COVID‐19 claims by searching for the detailed claim information (DCI) nature of injury code 83 (COVID‐19) or cause of injury code 83 (pandemic). To identify additional COVID‐19 claims that were not captured in the nature of injury or case of injury, we searched free text within the injury description field for the terms: “corona,” “covid,” “ncov,” and “sars‐cov‐2.”
  • Non-COVID-19 claim: Any claim that did not meet any of the criteria above. This includes claims for all other injuries or illnesses excluding COVID-19.
  • Age: Age at the time of the injury
  • Year of injury: the year when the injury occurred.
  • Fatal injury: This determination is made by DWD using a combination of claim determinations and manual review.
  • Claim denied: Any indemnity claim that has been denied and has not received any payment.
  • Claim paid: Any claim that was awarded an indemnity payment category includes death benefits and payment by mistake of facts.
  • Lost work time payment: This indemnity payment includes temporary total disability, temporary partial disability, and state hazardous pay payments.
  • Indemnity payment: These are non-medical payments, such as lost time, permanent total disability, and permanent partial disability.
  • Other indemnity: Any type of Worker's Compensation payment that isn't included in the other payment categories.
  • Detailed claim information is codified by the Worker's Compensation Insurance Organization (WCIO) which provides the codes to classify the body part injured, the cause of injury and the nature of injury. Definitions of the Part of Body, Nature of Injury and Cause of Injury can be found through the WCIO Injury Description tables.
  • Work-related fatalities: included only those fatalities that were (or according to our best estimation were) conceded by the insurance carrier or found to be compensable by an Administrative Law Judge, and therefore determined to be work-related fatalities per Chapter 102. There may be other work-related deaths in Wisconsin, but because the employer did not fall under Chapter 102 (e.g. certain farming operations), the fatality is not reportable and thus not reported to us. We did not show any work-related deaths or death benefits before 2016.
Related pages

Glossary

 
Last revised January 17, 2025