• Project number: F 2588
• Institution: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA)
• Status: Ongoing Project
• Planned end: 2026-06-30

Description:

Physical workload is common to many jobs in the contemporary and changing working world. Physical strain is caused by standing, sitting for long periods, lifting loads, working in awkward positions, repetitive manual handling, and physically demanding work. Musculoskeletal disorders are therefore one of the most relevant occupational disease groups. For this reason, representative and updated information on the prevalence of exposure to physical working conditions and work-related musculoskeletal complaints is needed to provide good policy advice and support decision-making processes.

Thus, the aim of this project is to use data from the current BIBB/BAuA 2024 Employment Survey to describe the prevalence of physical workload and the prevalence of complaints in different regions of the musculoskeletal system in relation to the self-reported intensity of physical workload. The effect of other important influencing factors for musculoskeletal complaints, such as age, sex and other occupational exposures will be considered. In addition, temporal trends in the prevalence of physical workload and temporal changes in the occurrence of complaints among those exposed to physical workload will be analysed with reference to previous BIBB/BAuA employee surveys.