Between 2019 and 2023, a total of 165,591 work accidents with sick leave involving self-employed workers occurred in Spain. Of these, 97.6% were minor accidents, 2.2% were serious and 0.2% were fatal.
In contrast, 99% of work accidents with sick leave among employees in the last five years were minor, 0.7% serious and 0.1% fatal.
By type of assistance, 15.1% of work accidents with sick leave suffered by self-employed individuals in the same period required hospital assistance, compared to 7.4% of salaried workers.
"These figures highlight that self-employed workers suffer more serious and fatal accidents," said José Luis Cebrián, coordinator of the Occupational Risk Prevention Activities Service of the mutual insurance company.
These data are extracted from a study conducted by the mutual insurance company Umivale Activa in collaboration with the Association of Self-Employed Workers ATA on the accident rate of the self-employed population.
The vast majority of those injured are men
In addition, traffic accidents accounted for 12.5% of the total accidents with sick leave of self-employed individuals, and of these, 22.9% of the cases resulted in the death of the worker.
By gender, men are the ones who suffer the bulk of the accidents, with 81.4% compared to 18.3% of women. If we look at where they were when the accident occurred, 67.7% of them took place in the usual workplace, and if we look at seniority, 46.7% of those injured had been less than five years developing their activity.
By sectors, 28.4% of work accidents with sick leave are concentrated in the construction sector, followed by the agriculture sector (10.1%) and land transport and pipeline (9.4%).
At the geographical level, 52.2% of accidents of work with sick leave in self-employed are concentrated in four autonomous communities, with Andalusia being the one that agglutinates the highest percentage of accidents with about 18%, followed by Catalonia (14.1%), Valencian Community (11.3%) and Madrid (9.2%).
