Trends
Four years of recorded rates, not forecasts
Private health care’s overall rate fell from 4.3 in 2021 and 4.5 in 2022 to 3.6 in 2023 and 3.4 in 2024. The drop is real in the official record — and it is not the whole story. Skilled nursing and ambulance work remained far above the private-industry average.
Total recordable case rates, private industry
Cases per 100 full-time equivalent workers, 2021–2024
Data table & download
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, SOII Table 1 for 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. Last of these released January 22, 2026. These are recorded annual estimates, not projections.
What changed
- Private skilled nursing facilities recorded a rate of 13.1 in 2022, then 6.9 in 2023 and 6.3 in 2024. The 2022 spike coincided with a period when COVID-19 and other respiratory illness still loomed large in employer logs.
- Private ambulance services fell from 10.5 in 2021 to 5.9 in 2024 — still more than twice the private-industry rate of 2.3.
- Private hospitals held at 6.1 in both 2021 and 2022, then 5.2 in 2023 and 5.1 in 2024.
- Psychiatric and substance-abuse hospitals were 6.3 in 2023 and 6.9 in 2024. A one-year rise in a rounded rate is not, by itself, a claim of statistical significance; we report the published numbers.
- BLS reported that the 2024 decline in private-industry cases was driven by fewer illness cases, especially respiratory illnesses, which fell 46.1% to 54,000.
Source: BLS SOII Table 1, 2021–2024, and BLS news release USDL-26-0101, January 22, 2026.
Where the 2024 rates still stand
Cases per 100 full-time equivalent workers, selected settings
Data table & download
Source: BLS SOII Table 1, 2024, released January 22, 2026. State nursing and residential care is a state-government rate, not a private-industry rate.
Other private settings in the same years
Cases per 100 full-time equivalent workers, 2021–2024
Data table
Source: BLS SOII Table 1, 2021–2024.