Oregon workers compensation rates will decline 7.6% on average next year due to lower medical and indemnity costs, the state Department of Consumer and Business Services says.

Some workers compensation managers may beg to differ, based on their experience handling certain worker claims, but this recent Freakonomics post “Whatever Happened to the Carpal Tunnel Epidemic?” says the epidemic is now behind us.

Workers compensation claim frequency continued declining during 2012, after the Great Recession, which may have driven a 2010 frequency spike, according to a National Council on Compensation Insurance Inc. research brief released Thursday.