FIFO Workforce · 17 July 2026 · 5 min read

The 4.2 million dollars a year sitting inside a 200 person roster

Australian researchers priced what health-related absence and half-speed shifts cost a FIFO workforce. The sites that see the number first are the ones that get some of it back.

A 200 person FIFO operation loses about 4.2 million dollars a year to health-related absence and half-speed shifts. That is not a guess. Curtin University researchers surveyed Australian FIFO mining workers and priced it: 21 million dollars per 1,000 workers, every year.

The good news: a decent slice of that money is recoverable, and the recovery starts with information most sites already have but never collect in time.

$21M

per 1,000 FIFO workers per year: the priced cost of health-related productivity loss

$4.2M

the annual share for a typical 200 person operation

1 in 5

workers will miss hours this year, most of it predictable days in advance

FIFO crew talking in front of haul trucks on an Australian mine site — Every seat on the roster has a price. Researchers have now put numbers on the empty ones.

The visible slice: the empty seat

One in five workers missed hours for health reasons in the study year, averaging 16 hours per four weeks among those who missed any. Priced against the average mining wage, absence runs about 8.8 million dollars per 1,000 workers a year. This is the slice you can see: the short bus, the parked truck, the 5am phone calls.

The bigger slice: on site, below capacity

The slice nobody counts is workers who turn up but run flat: broken sleep, a crook back, a head full of home. More than half the workforce (53.7 percent) reported it, and it is worth about 14.1 million dollars per 1,000 workers a year, roughly 60 percent more than absence itself. Your roster marks the seat filled. The dirt moved says otherwise.

The price list, per worker, per year

Poor physical health: $14,386 the most expensive single condition
Psychological distress: $8,664 carried by a third of FIFO workers
Poor diet: $4,742 and 96 percent of workers qualified
Bad sleep: $4,124 affecting two thirds of the crew
Not enough exercise: $4,003
Smoking: $3,721

They stack. Nearly every worker had at least two going at once; a quarter had five or more.

Where a superintendent gets some of it back

Make the one in five a plan, not a surprise. Someone on every swing will not show. Found out three days early, that is routine backfill. Found out at the bus, it is overtime, fatigue, and a same-day airfare. The money difference is entirely in the timing.
Treat sleep as a rostering lever. Bad sleep costs four grand per worker per year and touches most of the crew. Swing design and changeover timing move that number.
Sell certainty. A third of the workforce carries psychological distress, and an early, stable, trustworthy roster is one of the cheapest supports an operation can offer.

The researchers also note their figure is the floor: wages only, no idle gear, no lost production, no overtime premiums. Whatever you recover, the real return is bigger than the wage math suggests.

Numbers from Asare et al. 2022, a peer-reviewed study of 216 Australian FIFO mining workers, free to read at doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191610056.

Where Data Informatics fits: we automate the timing advantage. Publish the quarter, crew confirm each swing on WhatsApp days ahead, and a decline instantly surfaces who can cover. The free plan runs a full roster.

Plan your next quarter on Data Informatics

Quarterly FIFO rosters, swing patterns, WhatsApp attendance confirmation, and backfill in one place. Free to start.

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