Inside the Deadliest Job in America

Logging has long been a way of life for rural communities in the Pacific Northwest and South. It also comes with grave risk.

Mostly employed in densely forested pockets of the Pacific Northwest and the South, loggers have the highest rate of fatal on-the-job injuries of any civilian occupation in the nation, outpacing roofers, hunters and underground mining machine operators.

About 100 of every 100,000 logging workers die from work injuries, compared with four per 100,000 for all workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“There is a mix of physical factors — heavy equipment and, of course, the massive trees,” said Marissa Baker, a professor of occupational health at the University of Washington who has researched the logging industry. “Couple that with steep terrain and unforgiving weather and the rural aspect of the work, and it leads to great danger.”

In the most rural stretches of Oregon, where swaths have been scarred by the clear-cutting of trees, many workers decide the risk is worth it. Most loggers here earn around $29 an hour. And average timber industry wages are 17 percent higher than local private-sector wages, according to a recent report from the Oregon Department of Administrative Services.

Logging operates mostly year round, with workers usually bouncing among companies — sometimes called outfits — where pay can vary according to the specific job that needs to be done. But the industry has declined steeply since the 1990s, partly because of competition from other countries, including Brazil and Canada, and years of legal battles as conservationists seek to limit logging in old-growth forests.