Top 6 Most Dangerous Jobs of 2017

When you spend all day feeling like a pencil pusher or conducting the majority of your business online, it can be easy to forget that many people in the workforce risk serious occupational danger every day. The most dangerous jobs aren’t necessarily the ones you’d expect. Let’s take a look:

1. Logging

Working as a logger or lumberjack involves a lot of physical labor – and a lot of risks! Between falling trees, heavy machinery, and rough terrain, logging workers have a lot of potential dangers to consider while going about their daily tasks. In 2014, there were 78 occupational fatalities in the logging industry.

2. Fishing and Fishing Related Work

There’s a reason there’s an entire television show dedicated to the perils that fishing crews face on a daily basis as they attempt to catch delicacies like Alaskan crab. Deep sea fishermen spend months living in brutal and challenging conditions: freezing temperatures, rough waters, long nights, and moving machinery all make this occupation especially deadly.

3. Piloting and Flight Engineering

Pilots and Flight engineers take on a lot of inherent risk in the workplace, especially bush pilots who fly small aircrafts in remote areas. These pilots face not only high altitudes, but extreme weather and hostile terrain as well.

4. Sanitation Work

Heavy equipment and hazardous waste. We see sanitation workers all the time and rarely consider the dangers associated with their jobs. However, sanitation work ranks highly across the charts for dangerous jobs.

5. Structural Iron and Steel Work

Heavy materials and welding equipment are dangerous enough on their own, but when you add great heights to the mix it’s no wonder these occupations are among the most dangerous. Steel workers and construction teams risk their lives on a daily basis in order to create our buildings and skyscrapers.

6. Search and Rescue Operations

Conditions leading to an event in which someone must be not just rescued but also must actually found first are almost always going to be dangerous. Whether it’s a mountain rescue team in search of hikers or a Coast Guard operation, search and rescue teams take on terrible conditions facing the elements in order to do their jobs.