Jersey’s most dangerous jobs

While you might not think of grave digging as a glamorous job, you wouldn't tend to think of it as a dangerous one either. Don't tell that to Peter Ferencze. He was digging a grave in East Hanover Twp. Tuesday when something went terribly wrong. An 800 pound vault cover fell on top of him and pinned him in the open grave. Emergency workers rushed to dig out the vault cover then manually lifted it out of the grave to free him. He was taken to a hospital with chest injuries but he'll be okay.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration is conducting an investigation. Speaking of government agencies, a quick look at figures released last year by the Bureau of Labor Statistics points to which jobs in New Jersey are among the most dangerous. See if you're surprised by any of these.

In the last year stats were available 97 people lost their lives on the job in New Jersey. More than a third of them were from the trucking and transportation industry. 37 to be exact. This was a wide category that included not only truckers but taxi and limo drivers which accounted for 4 of those deaths.

Construction continues to be a dangerous job in Jersey with 22 deaths in one year. Within those fatal accidents are also your specialty tradesmen such as roofers.

Sanitation workers even made the list of dangerous jobs with 3 workers killed. You might not think of a garbage truck as particularly dangerous with the slow speeds and constant stops, but think about the guys hanging on the back of that moving vehicle.

Not surprisingly men accounted for almost all workplace deaths. Only 2% of New Jersey's workplace fatalities were women. How did age play into the numbers? It wasn't the younger rookies that were killed most often. It was men between 55 and 64 years old that saw the most deaths.

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