A newly released state report shows slightly fewer people were killed in job-related accidents in Wyoming in 2015 compared to the year before.

There were 34 such deaths last year, compared to 37 in the state in 2014.

The report was released Friday by the Research and Planning section  of the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services.

That's a decline of 8.1 percent. Senior Wyoming Economist David Bullard says that while the state's job-related death rate tends to fluctuate from year-to-year, it's possible that the shrinking state economy also played a role in the decline.

Simply put, fewer people were working in Wyoming last year compared to the year before because of the economic downturn which has plagued the state in recent years. Fewer people on the job would tend to mean fewer fatal accidents, assuming the accident rate remained about the same.

The report says 12 people died (35.3 percent of all deaths) in 2015 in the natural resources and mining sector of the economy, with eight of those coming in agriculture and four in the mining sector (including oil and natural gas). Another nine people (26.5 percent) died in trade, transportation and utilities jobs in Wyoming last year. and seven more (20,6 percent) died in the transportation-warehousing sector.

Bullard says exactly half of all job-related fatalities last year were transportation deaths. That includes highway accidents as well as airplane crashes and any other death involving a mode of transportation.

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