This Map Shows The Most Dangerous Jobs in All 50 States

There’s an old adage that rings true for anyone who’s dispassionately held down a job for more than six months: work sucks and then you die. For some people however, guarding one’s life is a necessity of the workplace, especially if you find employment in one of the most dangerous industries in America. From the work resource website Zippia, comes a map documenting the most dangerous industries across all fifty states. If anything, it should make you appreciate the brave souls who venture into the meat processing plants and oil rigs of America just to earn a living for their families.

Combing through a whopping 19,937 injury reports filed to the Occupation Safety and Health Administration since 2015, Zippia divided the reports by the amount of people employed in each state. Needless to say, it paints a grim portrait of the American jobs landscape. Of course, the scale of danger reflects predominate industries by state, so it’s no surprise that Oil and Gas Support is the most perilous profession in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, North Dakota, West Virginia and Colorado. Slaughterhouse work is also quite dangerous, as those jobs rank as the worst for safety in Kansas and Nebraska. Similarly, poultry processing wins out in Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia and Delaware.

Let’s not forget the mailmen and women of America, though. The cliche of getting chased by a dog on a mail route is an easy image to conjure -- mainly because it happens constantly -- but postal service workers face the unpredictability of nature on a daily basis. Therefore it’s no surprise that working for the US Postal Service is the most dangerous profession in 11 states.

But wait, the disconcerting research isn’t over yet! Citing Bureau of Labor and Statistics rates of on-the-job injuries, Zippia ranked each state according to its level of clear and present workplace danger. Montana’s sawmills make it the most dangerous state to hold down a job, followed by South Dakota (frozen food manufacturing) and Wyoming (US Park Services).

For a list of the most dangerous jobs in all fifty states, see Zippia's study.

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