
Be Part of the Ultimate Safety & Compliance Community
Trending news, knowledge-building content, and more – all personalized to you!
Employers cited $40,000 or more in an inspection since January 1, 2015, are posted on OSHA’s website, and now that list of inspections has passed the 10,000 mark. The agency calls these “high-penalty cases,” and we calculate there were 108 high-penalty cases per month on average through mid-August 2022, a span of 7 years and 8.5 months. That averages to about 1,300 high-penalty cases per year.
While OSHA’s total penalty amounts can and have pushed into the tens of millions of dollars for a single inspection, the highest figures for a single inspection since 2015 include:
However, a majority of inspections on the list were under $100,000 in total initial penalties as shown below:
States with the top number of cases at or over $40K include:
The source of this data — OSHA’s “Enforcement Cases with Initial Penalties of $40,000 or Above” tool — comes in a table or map view. The table can be sorted by:
“Initial penalty” amounts are not necessarily the final or current penalty amounts. Therefore, hypothetically, some cases might have ended up with a final total penalty under $40,000. Also, some employers are listed in the tool more than once, depending on how many penalty cases at or over $40,000 they had.
While a few cases from 2014 slipped into the tool, OSHA explains that the data covers cases from January 1, 2015, to the present. A disclaimer on the tool explains that it is updated weekly, except there’s a posting delay to ensure the parties have been notified. This delay appears to be a little over two weeks.
OSHA posts cases with initial penalties of $40,000 or more on the agency’s website. The data goes all the way back to January 1, 2015. Just recently, the number of these high-penalty cases passed the 10,000 inspections count.
Employers cited $40,000 or more in an inspection since January 1, 2015, are posted on OSHA’s website, and now that list of inspections has passed the 10,000 mark. The agency calls these “high-penalty cases,” and we calculate there were 108 high-penalty cases per month on average through mid-August 2022, a span of 7 years and 8.5 months. That averages to about 1,300 high-penalty cases per year.
While OSHA’s total penalty amounts can and have pushed into the tens of millions of dollars for a single inspection, the highest figures for a single inspection since 2015 include:
However, a majority of inspections on the list were under $100,000 in total initial penalties as shown below:
States with the top number of cases at or over $40K include:
The source of this data — OSHA’s “Enforcement Cases with Initial Penalties of $40,000 or Above” tool — comes in a table or map view. The table can be sorted by:
“Initial penalty” amounts are not necessarily the final or current penalty amounts. Therefore, hypothetically, some cases might have ended up with a final total penalty under $40,000. Also, some employers are listed in the tool more than once, depending on how many penalty cases at or over $40,000 they had.
While a few cases from 2014 slipped into the tool, OSHA explains that the data covers cases from January 1, 2015, to the present. A disclaimer on the tool explains that it is updated weekly, except there’s a posting delay to ensure the parties have been notified. This delay appears to be a little over two weeks.
OSHA posts cases with initial penalties of $40,000 or more on the agency’s website. The data goes all the way back to January 1, 2015. Just recently, the number of these high-penalty cases passed the 10,000 inspections count.