BLS develops measure of job risk by occupation.

As one might expect, blue-collar workers generally experience more job-related injuries' than white-collar employees, in both relative and absolute terms. What is surprising, however, is the magnitude of this difference between the two groups . A new injury index by occupation indicates that laborers had injuries at a level almost four times the average while operatives and craftworkers incurred injuries at about one-and-a-half times the norm . On the other hand, professional and technical workers, managers and administrators, salesworkers, and clerical workers were subject to injuries at a level about one-fourth the average. However, a number of whiteand blue-collar occupations had indexes different from those of the broad occupational group to which they belong . Since the inception of the Supplementary Data System (SDS) program in 1976, there has been a demand for injury incidence rates by occupation, which are more accurate measures of risk than simple frequencies because they eliminate the effects of employment size. The absence of occupational exposure data, differences in State workers' compensation coverage and reporting requirements,' and the lack of a complete universe of States in SDS program prevented the development of