Key Takeaways from OSHA's Severe Injury Reporting Data 

OSHA's Severe Injury Reporting program has now collected nine years of data on workplace amputations, inpatient hospitalizations, and eye losses. The agency's most recent summary puts a number on the problem that every EHS professional should know: one severe injury reported roughly every 53 minutes, around the clock, every day of the year. Here is what the latest data shows and what it means for workplace safety.

What the Severe Injury Reporting Program Covers

Under 29 CFR 1904.39, every employer covered by the OSH Act must report certain work-related outcomes to OSHA. An inpatient hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye must be reported within 24 hours, provided the outcome occurs within 24 hours of the work-related incident. A work-related fatality must be reported within 8 hours if it occurs within 30 days of the incident. These reports feed into OSHA's Severe Injury Report (SIR) dataset, which the agency makes available to the public for download and analysis. Fatalities are tracked in a separate database.

The reporting requirement took effect on January 1, 2015. Before that date, employers only had to report incidents involving three or more hospitalizations or a fatality. The expanded rule brought single-hospitalization events and all amputations into scope, giving OSHA a far more detailed view of how and where workers are getting seriously hurt. The SIR dataset includes reports from employers under federal OSHA authority only; incidents reported to OSHA-approved state plan programs are tracked separately and are not included in this data.

One Severe Injury Reported Every 53 Minutes

In recent years, employers reported a combined 19,690 inpatient hospitalizations and amputations to federal OSHA. That works out to an average of 27 severe injuries per day. No losses of an eye have been reported to OSHA in any year from 2016 through 2023.

The daily average of 27 is actually consistent with where the program started in 2015. Reports climbed steadily through 2018, peaking at 31 per day that year, before the COVID-19 pandemic drove a sharp drop in 2020. That decline coincided with pandemic-related shutdowns and reduced employment, though the data alone does not isolate the exact cause. Reporting has since recovered but has not returned to the 2018 peak. Whether that reflects genuine safety improvement, shifts in workforce composition, or continued underreporting is difficult to determine from the data alone.

There are some positive signals in the trend data. Construction sector SIR rates for 2023 came in 17% below the seven-year average (2015 through 2021), and transportation and warehousing rates dropped 22% below that same baseline. Those decreases are meaningful given how consistently those industries have appeared at the top of severe injury rankings.

Where and How Workers Are Getting Hurt

Manufacturing and construction together account for more than half of all severe injuries reported to federal OSHA. That pattern has held steady since the program began. However, when the numbers are adjusted for workforce size, a different picture emerges. The mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction sector has the highest rate of severe injuries per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers, even though its total report count is lower than manufacturing or construction.

The three most common types of incidents behind these injuries during 2022 and 2023 were:

• Caught in or compressed by equipment/objects: 4,158 reports (23% of total)
• Falls to lower level: 3,110 reports (17%)
• Struck by object or equipment: 3,046 reports (17%)

Those three categories alone account for well over half of all severe injuries reported. The sources behind these incidents follow a similar pattern:

• Machinery: 4,548 reports (25%)
• Structures and surfaces: 3,908 reports (22%)
• Vehicles: 2,853 reports (16%)

The connection between these sources and the industries reporting the most injuries is direct: machinery drives the manufacturing numbers, falls and structures tie to construction, and vehicles are a persistent factor in transportation and warehousing.

Body part data from OSHA's seven-year lookback (2015 through 2021) adds another layer. Upper extremities, including arms, hands, and fingers, accounted for 40% of all reported severe injuries. Within that group, fingertip injuries alone represented 29% of all upper extremity cases. Lower extremities made up 20% of total reports. These patterns have not changed significantly over the life of the program.

Four Hazards Worth a Closer Look

OSHA's 2022-2023 report spotlighted four hazard areas that deserve attention from safety teams, either because the numbers are high, the trend is concerning, or the risk is often underestimated.

Workplace Violence

Workplace violence accounted for 325 severe injury reports over the two-year period. The most common forms were hitting, kicking, or beating (119 reports), intentional shooting by another person (77), and stabbing or cutting (36). Retail trade led all sectors at 26% of workplace violence SIRs, followed closely by healthcare and social assistance at 25%. Manufacturing accounted for 9%. These numbers only capture incidents serious enough to require inpatient hospitalization or result in an amputation, so the actual scope of workplace violence is broader than what appears in the SIR data.

Heat-Related Illness

Heat-related illness resulted in 451 inpatient hospitalizations during 2022 and 2023. Heat affects workers in both outdoor and indoor settings, from mail carriers and construction crews to warehouse and kitchen workers. OSHA proposed a rule in 2024 that would require employers to develop heat injury and illness prevention plans and take specific protective steps when the heat index reaches 80°F or above. More information on OSHA's heat illness prevention efforts is available on the agency's website.

Forklift-Related Injuries

Forklift-related injuries totaled 1,190 reports, split between 994 inpatient hospitalizations and 196 amputations. Manufacturing operations generated 33% of those reports, transportation and warehousing contributed 26%, and wholesale trade added 14%. Powered industrial trucks regularly appear on OSHA's top 10 most cited standards list, and the SIR data confirms that the injuries behind those citations are often severe.

Food Processing Machinery

Food processing machinery was involved in 440 severe injury reports. Three out of four of those reports involved amputations of a finger or fingertip. This pattern echoes one of the earliest findings from the program: in 2015, OSHA's southeast region noticed a spike in fingertip amputations from food slicers and grinders and launched a targeted outreach campaign across eight states. A decade later, food processing equipment remains a persistent source of amputation injuries. In 2024, OSHA released a Hazard Alert on severe injuries in the food processing industry highlighting common equipment hazards and corrective measures.

OSHA's New Severe Injury Report Dashboard

In 2024, OSHA launched an interactive Severe Injury Report Dashboard that makes the full SIR dataset searchable by the public. The dashboard covers all severe injury reports filed with federal OSHA from 2015 through 2023 and is filterable by year, industry (NAICS code), state, establishment name, type of incident, injury source, and body part affected.

For EHS teams, this tool opens up several practical uses. Safety managers can filter by their own NAICS code to see which injury types are most common in their industry. They can track whether severe injury patterns in their sector are improving or worsening over time. Employers preparing for OSHA inspections can review what has been reported at similar operations. The full dataset is also available for download from OSHA's severe injury reports page for anyone who wants to run their own analysis.

OSHA cautions against using raw report counts to rank individual employers. Factors like establishment size, industry risk profile, and reporting compliance all affect the numbers. The dashboard is a tool for identifying patterns and informing safety decisions, not for making isolated judgments about specific workplaces.

Nine years of severe injury reporting data tells a consistent story. The same industries, the same equipment, and the same types of incidents keep producing serious injuries year after year. The 2022-2023 numbers confirm that manufacturing, construction, and transportation remain the highest-volume sectors, while machinery, falls, and struck-by incidents remain the most common causes.

What has changed is how accessible this information has become. Between the annual summary reports and the new interactive dashboard, EHS professionals now have direct access to the data they need to benchmark their industry, identify their highest-risk scenarios, and build the case for targeted safety investments. The 2022-2023 summary report and the complete SIR dataset are both available at osha.gov/severeinjury.