PlainWorker

DOL OSHA + WHD · extract through August 2026

U.S. workplace enforcement statistics

Key findings compiled live from OSHA inspection extracts and DOL Wage and Hour Division cases. Every figure below is computed from the PlainWorker database at request time; nothing is typed in by hand. These are enforcement counts, not a grade of whether a workplace is safe.

235,985
Employers tracked
391,598
OSHA inspections
$1.49B
Current penalties

The extract in one line

235,985 employers, 391,598 OSHA inspections (2.26 violations per inspection, inspection-weighted), and $1.49B in current penalties; Manufacturing leads NAICS sectors at $6,092 per inspection.

Vintage August 2026. Penalty-per-inspection ranking uses sectors with at least 50 inspections, the same cohort as industry detail.

Key findings

Standalone, citable statements from the linked DOL extracts. Free to reuse with attribution to PlainWorker (CC BY 4.0; cite the page).

  • 235,985 employers are in the PlainWorker OSHA/WHD corpus. Every figure below is recomputed from that extract at request time. Employers enter the index once they have at least two OSHA inspections or $1,000 or more in WHD back wages.
  • 391,598 OSHA inspections sit in the extract, with 885,759 cited violations (2.26 violations per inspection, inspection-weighted: SUM(violations) / SUM(inspections), not an average of per-employer rates).
  • $1.49B in current OSHA penalties are on file, $3,803 per inspection across the same inspection-weighted national average. Current penalty can be lower than the original citation after settlement or contest.
  • $6,092 average OSHA penalty per inspection puts Manufacturing (NAICS 31-33) at #1 of 22 sectors with at least 50 inspections. Other sits last at $3 per inspection. This is enforcement intensity, not an injury or fatality rate.
  • $6.5M is the current OSHA penalty on Keystone Construction & Maintenance (Middletown, CT), the highest current-penalty employer among non-placeholder records. Rankings pages that list the same board are noindex; this page restates the live #1 for citation.
  • $2.92B in WHD back wages sit across 99,959 cases. OSHA penalties and WHD recoveries are separate enforcement arms and are not added into a single "cost of noncompliance" score.
  • $352.5M Texas leads the WHD state table on back wages (14,000 cases; 12,369 employers with at least one WHD case). Recovery totals track where WHD brought cases, not where wage theft is most common.
  • 62.4% of tracked employers have at least one OSHA inspection on file (147,159 of 235,985); 39% have a WHD case (91,936). The rest are in the corpus on the other enforcement arm or the two-inspection / $1,000 floor.

Highest industry penalty per inspection

Average current OSHA penalty per inspection among NAICS sectors with at least 50 inspections. Same ORDER BY as industry detail pages. A high rate can mean heavier citations, not a higher injury rate.

Industry OSHA penalty intensity

Top sectors, 50+ inspections

USD per inspection

What this shows Manufacturing leads this 22-sector cohort at $6,092 per inspection. Compare each bar to the inspection-weighted national average of $3,803.

Source U.S. Department of Labor, OSHA enforcement extracts As of August 2026

Source: U.S. Department of Labor OSHA Enforcement Data · 2026

How the ordinal is derived: methodology, corpus placement.

How to read these numbers

OSHA inspections, violation counts, current penalties, and WHD back wages are separate series. PlainWorker publishes vintage-stamped registry totals so readers can cite the extract without treating a penalty total as a safety grade or a WHD recovery as the true scale of wage theft. National averages on this page are inspection-weighted. Industry ranks reuse the 50-inspection floor documented on methodology.

Download the industry snapshot: OSHA/WHD enforcement statistics CSV (CC BY 4.0).

Every figure on PlainWorker is rendered directly from official U.S. Department of Labor OSHA and Wage & Hour Division enforcement records, no number is typed in by an editor. National violation and penalty rates are inspection-weighted (SUM over SUM). Industry ranks use NAICS sectors with at least 50 inspections. OSHA penalties and WHD back wages are never summed into one score. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of August 2026.