October 2026
More than one in five workers surveyed reported experiencing a work-related mental health issue in the past year, according to the latest Work Shouldn’t Hurt survey by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). The survey is part of the union movement’s ongoing work to expose workplace harm and win stronger protections — the same work that delivered the health and safety rights workers rely on today, from the right to a health and safety representative to the right to refuse unsafe work.
The fourth edition, conducted by the ACTU Centre for Health and Safety, received responses from 4,501 workers in September 2025 and forms part of a longitudinal research program tracking shifts and stagnations in workplace health and safety over time. The results show that psychological harm remains a significant concern across industries. There are some encouraging signs: workers experiencing mental health injuries are increasingly taking time off when they need it, and more workers report that their employers are giving mental hazards the same weight as physical ones. But there is still significant work to do, and unions will keep pushing employers and governments until every worker is protected from psychological harm. Here’s what the data shows us:
Mental health injuries reported at almost twice the rate of physical injuries
In the 12 months to September 2025, 21% of respondents reported a work-related mental health issue, compared with 11% who reported a physical injury [1]. The mental health figure was down from 24% in 2023, a statistically significant improvement, but remained almost twice the physical injury rate. National workers compensation data separately shows psychological claims continuing to rise.
Safe Work Australia’s most recent report found that mental health claims rose by 14.7% in a single year, from roughly 15,300 to 17,600 claims in 2023–24 [2]. Almost three-quarters of ACTU survey respondents who reported a mental health injury either took time off or said they needed to. Encouragingly, the proportion who actually took time off increased significantly, from 36% in 2022 to 45% in 2025 [1].
Patterns with gender and age are just as consistent. Women reported mental health injuries at nearly twice the rate of men (22% compared with 13%). Younger workers also reported higher rates of mental health injury, with 27% of women under 34 reporting one in the past year, compared with 18% of men in the same age group [1]. Younger workers were also more likely to say they didn’t know how to report a mental health issue or risk, a gap that, worryingly, still affects more than one in five young workers.
Mental health injuries are less likely to lead to treatment or compensation claims
The report also shows how differently workers respond to physical and psychological injuries when it comes to seeking treatment and compensation. Workers with a physical injury were more likely to seek medical advice (68%) than those with a mental health injury (51%), and were also significantly more likely to go on to make a workers compensation claim [1]. Workers gave a range of reasons for not pursuing a claim: uncertainty about their entitlement or coverage, fear of workplace backlash, managing the injury while continuing to work, and difficulty navigating the process.
Even once a claim is underway, the process isn’t always straightforward. Forty per cent of workers with a mental health injury, and 38% of those with a physical injury, felt their employer had tried to influence the doctor’s decision on their claim. For mental health claims specifically, 45% of respondents said a workplace representative had attended, or asked to attend, one of their doctor’s appointments. The report describes the ability to choose a treating medical practitioner as a basic right — one unions fought to embed in the workers compensation system, yet 19% of mental health claimants and 22% of physical injury claimants surveyed said they were unable to choose their own doctor.
The gap that’s still open
It’s tempting to read this as mental health finally getting a seat at the table, but it’s only a start. The order is an interim instrument — it is named an interim order — and will be reviewed if the Commission issues a notice of intent and draft order in either of the related last-mile delivery cases [1]. How far standard WHS psychosocial duties extend to platforms like Uber and DoorDash in practice is still being worked out.
Since 1 July 2026, the NSW Code of Practice on addressing psychosocial hazards has no longer been guidance, but has been an enforceable compliance benchmark under the state’s Work Health and Safety Act [6]. It reflects the direction regulatory expectations are headed, but it is a state WHS code based on traditional employment relationships that stands alongside, rather than within the federal minimum standards framework for gig workers. The consequence is a real gap: wage protection and a say in algorithmic change are arriving through one legal channel, while psychosocial safety protections are emerging through another, and the two have yet to be stitched together for gig workers in particular.
The system presents a different set of challenges for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers
The data paints an even starker picture for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers, who consistently reported higher rates of injury and exposure to risk than non-Indigenous workers. Almost half of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander respondents (49%) reported their own physical or mental health injury in the past year, compared with 27% of non-Indigenous workers. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander respondents were also more than twice as likely to report that someone at their workplace had experienced an injury requiring hospitalisation (40% compared with 16%) [1].
These disparities extend well beyond injury rates. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers were more likely to be regularly experiencing conflict at work (22% compared with 11% for non-Indigenous workers) and discrimination, harassment and racism (20% compared with 6%) [1], and exposure to noisy work environments was also higher, at 58% compared with 39% for non-Indigenous workers.
The likelihood of facing violence or threats of violence at work was nearly three times higher for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers (17% compared with 6%) [1]. Across almost every psychosocial risk factor measured, the pattern was the same.
Employers are shifting perspectives, but slowly
There were some positive shifts in 2025. More workers reported that health and safety is placed ahead of service, production and output, and that mental health hazards are now given the same importance as physical ones, both statistically significant improvements on 2023 [1]. The ACTU says these encouraging shifts coincide with a reduction in insecure work and growing understanding of mental health risks at work.
However, progress on the basics has been slower. Fifteen per cent of respondents still said they did not receive sufficient safety training to perform their work safely.
The proportion of workers who don’t know how to report a mental health injury or risk also fell significantly between 2023 and 2025, the only worker-engagement measure to improve over that period. Even so, one in five workers still don’t know how.
Younger workers remain the most likely to say they don’t know how to report a mental health concern, a pattern consistent with other findings in this year’s survey.
Findings from the latest survey suggest that workplace safety systems are improving, just not quickly enough for the workers who need them most. Workplaces with an HSR also reported significantly lower exposure to bullying and discrimination, an association that highlights the value of the union-won right to worker representation in workplace safety [1]. HSRs exist because unions campaigned for them, and this data shows why that structure matters.
The findings reinforce the importance of getting the fundamentals right: identifying psychosocial hazards, consulting workers about risks, making reporting processes clear and accessible, and ensuring workers know where to turn when something goes wrong.
Read the 2025 Work Shouldn’t Hurt survey in full here: 2025-Work-Shouldnt-Hurt-Survey-Report.pdf
Sources:
[1] Work Shouldn’t Hurt Survey, ACTU, 2025. https://www.actu.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2025-Work-Shouldnt-Hurt-Survey-Report.pdf
[2] Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025.