I’d be curious if it’s related to limitations in the data sources:
Between the FAA’s oversight of pilots while flying; and the NTSB’s interests in pilots whose failure to fly is sufficiently drastic; I’d imagine that piloting is a relatively well-documented profession; helped by the fact that a lot of the oversight apparatus is justified by either the strong and longstanding interest in the flying they do being quite safe; and the more recent security-fed interest in suspecting that pilots actively trying to be irregular might be up to something.
Roofing, though, offers a vast number of small, low-budget, jobs that encourage aggressively cost-optimized and not necessarily formal labor sourcing; and aren’t exactly risking a visit from OSHA(which, along with NIOSH, labors under the disadvantage of being seen as an actual worker safety entity that must be stymied, underfunded, or litigated against where possible).
I’d be(morbidly) curious what the numbers look like for fall and power tool injuries and fatalities consistent with roofing and similar construction work that turn up among people who were definitely not employed in roofing, see, no I-9 here, at the time.
