Being a firefighter is a very dangerous occupation, although it's been getting slightly safer over time. According to the National Fire Protection Association, almost 3,600 firefighters died on the job between 1981 and 2011. That's an average of about 115 occupational deaths per year for firefighters, although fortunately there's been a slight downward trend and the number of deaths last year was only about half the historical average at 61, setting a new record low.
The number of annual injuries for firefighters has been declining as well, but there were still almost 72,000 incidents last year. That means that almost 200 firefighters were injured on-the-job every day in 2010. There were slightly more than one million firefighters in 2010 (including 768,150 volunteers), which means that more than 6.5%, and more than one out of every 15 firefighters, were injured or killed on the job in 2010. That's a lot better than the 10% share of firefighters who were injured or killed in 1991, but it still makes firefighting one of the most dangerous jobs in America (based on both occupational fatalities and on-the-job injuries).
But there are huge, and persistent gender gaps for firefighters (along with huge gender occupational fatality gaps and huge gender occupational injury gaps), with male firefighters outnumbering female fighters by almost 27-to-1 (96.4% male vs. 3.6% female in 2010).
Q: Shouldn't the huge gender disparities in firefighting employment, injuries and deaths motivate applying Title IX legislation to this industry with the goal of perfect gender parity?
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