Following the numbers

From the NYT (of course), a brutal examination of a “disability epidemic” in a railroad system:

“Virtually every career employee — as many as 97 percent in one recent year — applies for and gets disability payments soon after retirement, a computer analysis of federal records by The New York Times has found. Since 2000, those records show, about a quarter of a billion dollars in federal disability money has gone to former L.I.R.R. employees, including about 2,000 who retired during that time.

The L.I.R.R.’s disability rate suggests it is one of the nation’s most dangerous places to work. Yet in four of the last five years, the railroad has won national awards for improving worker safety. “

The legwork that went into this piece is impressive, from number crunching to pouring over obscure rules, to performing dozens of interviews. It’s a perfect example of the type of journalism that bloggers have a hard time replicating (but counterexamples are welcome).

Now if only newspaper could figure out how to make money off stuff like this in our modern age…

• Link: A Disability Epidemic Among a Railroad’s Retirees