Abstract

Young people constitute a significant proportion of workers who suffer occupational injuries. To date, this occupational health and safety (OHS) issue has mainly been documented by cross-sectional surveys that have determined, among other things, the sectors and types of jobs where young people suffer the most injuries. Considering the various career paths of this population, its high representation in very small companies, and the extent of atypical work, these sources of data do not precisely account for the scope of this phenomenon. In fact, this type of analysis does not determine the moment of the appearance of the first lesions nor their effects on young people’s future employment paths and career trajectories.

The work of the report’s authors provided a better documentation of the dynamics of this path and of the OHS of young workers from 16 to 24 years of age, in the context of a longitudinal survey carried out by Statistics Canada, namely the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics. The results show that job mobility is strongly associated with the risk of occupational injuries and that this varies with age. Consequently, the total risk of suffering an occupational injury is higher for workers under 25 years of age than for older workers. Finally, in general, the variables related to employment and work organization are factors that can increase the risk of an occupational injury or not, which always varies with the workers’ age and gender.