Killer jobs: teachers have the lowest rate of suicide - but which workers have the highest?

Farmers, lumberjacks and fishermen have the highest suicide rate in the US, while educators have the lowest, according to a large study that found enormous differences across occupations.

The study didn’t explore the reasons behind the differences, but researchers found the highest suicide rates in manual labourers who work in isolation and face unsteady employment. High rates were also seen in carpenters, miners, electricians and people who work in construction. Mechanics were close behind.

Dentists, doctors and other health care professionals had an 80 per cent lower suicide rate than the farmers, fishermen and lumberjacks.

Thursday’s report from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention is perhaps the largest US study to compare suicide rates among occupations. But it is not comprehensive. It only covers 17 states, looking at about 12,300 of the more than 40,000 suicide deaths reported in the entire nation in 2012.

Because of the limited data, they could only calculate suicide rates for broad occupation categories, but not for specific jobs. The categories, which sometimes seem to group professions that have little to do with each other, like athletes and artists, are based on federal classifications used for collecting jobs-related data.

So it’s not clear what the suicide rate is just for farmers. Or for mathematicians. Or journalists.

Suicide is the nation’s 10th leading cause of death. Public attention often focuses on teens and college students, but the highest numbers and rates are in middle-aged adults. Suicide is far more common in males, and the rankings largely reflect the male suicide rates for each group.