SoterAI Risk Intelligence93 pages · third edition
Three years of OSHA enforcement,
read so you don't have to
The 2026 Annual OSHA Enforcement Review, published every September by SoterAI Risk Intelligence
Every inspection OSHA and the 22 State Plan agencies have opened since September 2023 is public. Almost nobody can read it. SoterAI Risk Intelligence can — and this is the annual public edition of that engine: eleven industry benchmarks, the controls behind them, and the rules inspectors are about to ask about next.
Introducing the SoterAI Annual OSHA Enforcement Review · 2026
We analyzed 199,031 inspections, 319,106 violations, and $834 million in fines
And distilled it into five findings that will change how you think about compliance. Here's a preview.
Finding 01
1 in 20 violations is the same one.
14,592
citations for working at height with no fall protection
The most preventable violation in the dataset — and still the most common.
Finding 02
Your next inspector probably works for your state.
50%+
of all private-sector inspections
State agencies now conduct more than half of all inspections. Federal inspections declined from 36k to 33k year-over-year, while state inspections held steady near 35k.
Finding 03
Federal OSHA visits less often. It costs more when it does.
$5,910
avg. federal fine vs. $3,512 avg. state fine
Fewer visits, higher stakes.
Finding 04
The #1 violation isn't a broken machine. It's a missing document.
9 of 11
industries where paperwork tops the list
Paperwork gaps are the leading driver of citations — not equipment failures.
Finding 05
Violations "down" in 2026? They just haven’t been counted yet.
25% → 100%
of violations recorded at 1 month vs. 6 months
Early data always looks better than reality.
01
The engine behind the review
Enforcement data is the closest thing the safety profession has to a live map of where regulators are looking, what they find and what it costs. It sits in millions of rows across federal and twenty-two State Plan rule books, in codes only a compliance specialist can decode, and it arrives months after the fact.
SoterAI Risk Intelligence continuously ingests the entire national enforcement record, cleans it, reconciles federal and state codes into one language of controls, and benchmarks every industry, sub-industry and jurisdiction against it. What used to take a consultant a quarter to assemble for one company now exists, refreshed, for every company at once.
It sees
Nearly 200,000 inspections and 320,000 citations from the last three years, indexed by industry, geography and rule — the complete public record, not a sample.
It translates
A citation number becomes a control — the thing a site either has or doesn't have. “1910.147” becomes “machine-specific lockout procedures, audited annually.”
It foresees
By tracking which rules are gaining share in national enforcement and which industries haven't been asked about them yet, Risk Intelligence names the controls a company will be inspected against before the industry knows it.
Risk Intelligence does not predict accidents. It reads the regulator's mind — from the regulator's own record — and hands you the controls to put in place before the knock on the door.
The same engine runs on your own data, not just the public record. Point it at your incident reports, near misses, hazard logs and internal policies, and it reads your history the way it reads OSHA's — surfacing the controls you've already been warned about, in your own words, months before an inspector ever asks. That internal record is often the most valuable signal a company has, and most of it has never been analyzed at this depth. See how to run it on your own data ↓
02
What the engine read this year
A three-year rolling window of every private-sector inspection opened between September 2023 and August 2026, federal OSHA and all 22 State Plan agencies combined.
199,031
private-sector inspections analyzed, Sep 2023 – Aug 2026
319,106
citations, each mapped to a control
$834M
in current penalties across the three-year window
23
rule books reconciled — 29 CFR plus 22 State Plans
Your next inspector is now more likely to work for your state than for federal OSHA — State Plan agencies open just over half of all private-sector inspections, and nearly a third of every citation in the country is written under a state rule, not 29 CFR. Federal visits are rarer, but they hit harder: the willful-or-repeat share of federal citations rose year over year, and the penalty per federal inspection climbed to $5,910, against $3,512 for a State Plan inspection.
03
Where your industry stands
Eleven target industries, ranked by penalty per inspection, with the single finding OSHA writes up most often in each — in plain words. The full review carries each to quartile benchmarks, three-year trends and paragraph-level findings.
| Industry | Cites/insp. | Penalty/insp. | Most-cited finding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chemicals & pharma | 1.9 | $7,083 | Equipment serviced with no written, machine-specific lockout procedure. |
| Food & beverage | 1.7 | $6,518 | Maintenance and sanitation crews working machines with no written lockout procedure. |
| Transportation equipment | 1.8 | $6,176 | Workers wearing respirators with no medical clearance behind them. |
| Wood, plastics & minerals | 2.4 | $5,581 | No written lockout procedure; dust and silica controls missing. |
| Machinery & electrical | 2.1 | $4,684 | Equipment serviced with no written lockout procedure. |
| Construction | 1.5 | $4,468 | Roofers, framers and siders working at height with no fall protection. |
| Metals | 2.1 | $4,332 | Machine work with no written lockout procedure — guards missing on presses, saws and grinders. |
| Warehousing & distribution | 1.4 | $3,772 | Forklift drivers never formally trained and evaluated. |
| Retail & grocery | 1.3 | $3,285 | Forklift and pallet-jack operators never trained; blocked exits in the back room. |
| Agriculture | 1.5 | $2,854 | Chemicals in use with no written hazard communication program. |
| Healthcare | 1.3 | $1,905 | A bloodborne-pathogens plan that exists on paper but hasn't been reviewed this year. |
Notice the pattern: in nine of the eleven industries, the top finding is a missing document — a written lockout procedure, a training record, a hazard communication program — not a missing piece of equipment. Inspectors cite what they cannot see on paper.
04
The questions coming next
By tracking which rules are gaining share in national enforcement and cross-referencing which industries haven't yet been asked about them, Risk Intelligence builds an invisible gap list for every industry — the controls a company will be inspected against before the sector knows it. Five rules gained the most ground nationally this year:
Stairways
Missing handrails and open sides on mezzanine and platform stairs.
Propane (LP-gas) handling
Forklift cylinders stacked by the dock door with no cage.
Bloodborne pathogens
Applies wherever a company designates first-aiders — almost everyone.
Air contaminants
Visible dust or fumes with no air sampling behind them.
Signs and tags
Biohazard labels, danger and caution signs, tags on defective tools.
Most industries have barely been cited under these yet — which is exactly why they matter. The full review carries an invisible gap list specific to each of the eleven target industries.
05
This is the public edition. Yours can be specific.
Everything in this review is computed from the public enforcement record — nothing is estimated or surveyed. SoterAI Risk Intelligence uses the same engine to place a single employer's own sites onto these benchmarks: its quartile, its trend against the industry, and its own invisible gap list, in minutes rather than a quarter. Layer in that employer's own incident, near-miss, hazard and policy data, and the benchmark becomes a plan — built from evidence no competitor can see.
Inside the full 93-page review
Benchmark cards
Quartile cut-points, federal vs. State Plan split, per industry.
Standard-to-control maps
The twenty most-cited rules per industry, translated into the control a CEO recognizes.
Circumstances & consequences
What's cited after an injury, which rules travel together, where willful and repeat penalties concentrate.
Beyond the public record
Want this built on your own data?
This review runs entirely on the public OSHA record. SoterAI Risk Intelligence can run the same analysis on your incidents, near misses, hazard reports and internal policies — often the most valuable signal a company has, and usually the least analyzed. Tell us a bit about your organization and we'll show you what it finds.
Build your own Risk Intelligence analysis
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