NCCI’s Workplace Violence: Part 3 – Assaults and Violence by Others in Finer Detail

Overview

The third and final installment of NCCI’s Workplace Violence Series examines assaults and violent acts by other persons.

Further exploration shows how industry composition, occupational mix, and ownership structure jointly influence the patterns observed in the data.

Key Findings​

• In health care and social assistance:
  • The assault share of all Days Away From Work (DAFW) cases doubled from 4.8% in 2011 to 9.6% in 2019
  • Assault shares fell sharply in 2020 and 2021–22, not because assaults declined, but because total DAFW cases surged during the COVID-​19 period, temporarily suppressing the assault share through a denominator effect
  • Assault rates rose from 6.4 to 9.8 per 10,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) workers from 2011 to 2021–22, showing a substantial long-run increase in underlying assault risk
  • Hospitals and nursing/residential care facilities accounted for 75.1% of violence-by-others cases (40.2% and 34.9%, respectively), with general medical and surgical hospitals alone accounting for 30.5% of the health care and social assistance total
  • Assault risk is pronounced in behavioral-health and residential settings: psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals posted a rate of 138.8 cases per 10,000 FTE workers, while residential intellectual/developmental disability, mental health, and substance abuse facilities posted a rate of 60.9
• For other NAICS sectors that contribute to workplace violence, we observe:
  • Increasing rates and shares of assaults over time
    • Protective services: Violence by others is concentrated in security guards for the private industry and police and corrections personnel for all ownerships
    • Education: Violence by others is concentrated in elementary and secondary schools (91.2%), and the occupational category with the highest assault rate is other educational, instructional, or library occupations at 53.3 cases per 10,000 FTE workers on an all-ownership basis

Why It Matters

This series provides a more robust view of workplace violence, from broad assault and homicide trends to the settings and occupations where exposure is concentrated. Part three adds important context by showing how sector, occupation, and ownership lenses can change what is visible in the data.

Complete Report

Workplace Violence: Part 3 – Assaults and Violence by Others in Finer Detail

Additional Resources

Workplace Violence: Part One – Assault Trends, Drivers, and Demographics

Workplace Violence: Part Two – Homicide Trends, Drivers, and Demographics