The Occupational Safety and Health Administration
Summary
Congress funds OSHA at $629,309,000 for fiscal year 2026, per the enacted appropriations law -- about $4.84 per worker across the 130 million workers the agency and its state partners cover. Its 1,810 federal employees in FY2025, the agency's last confirmed headcount, ran 30,273 inspections that year.
What is this organization?
What does it do?
In fiscal year 2025, federal conducted 30,273 inspections -- 16,311 opened by worker complaints, injuries, fatalities or referrals, and 13,962 from programmed sweeps targeting known hazards like heat, silica dust and falls. It writes and enforces workplace safety standards, investigates fatalities, and runs compliance-assistance and training programs. Combined with the state plans it funds, covers roughly 130 million workers at more than 8 million worksites⧉, patrolled by about 1,850 federal and state compliance officers -- one for every 70,000 workers.
What does it cost to run — money and people?
Congress funded OSHA at $629,309,000⧉ for fiscal year 2026 in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, signed February 3, 2026 -- about $3 million below FY2025's level. 's own FY2026 budget submission⧉ put its FY2025 enacted staffing at 1,810 full-time federal employees, the most recent headcount Congress has funded and published; FY2026's exact staffing has not yet appeared in a public budget document. Divided across the 130 million workers and its state partners cover, the FY2026 appropriation works out to about $4.84 per worker.
View data as table
| Federal Enforcement | 243,000 | 1,292 FTE |
|---|---|---|
| State Programs (grants) | 116,673 | state-run OSHA plans |
| Compliance Assistance -- Federal | 79,973 | 183 FTE |
| Compliance Assistance -- State Consultation | 61,276 | free small-business consultations |
| Safety and Health Statistics | 35,500 | 32 FTE |
| Whistleblower Programs | 26,000 | 114 FTE |
| Technical Support | 26,000 | 90 FTE |
| Safety and Health Standards | 21,000 | 71 FTE |
| Compliance Assistance -- Training Grants | 12,787 | Susan Harwood grants |
| Executive Direction | 10,100 | 28 FTE |
Why is it good for society?
's own accounting: worker deaths are down⧉, on average, from about 38 a day in 1970, the year the OSH Act passed, to 15 a day in 2023 -- even as the workforce more than doubled -- and injury/illness rates fell from 10.9 per 100 workers in 1972 to 2.4 per 100 in 2023. There were still 5,283 fatal work injuries in 2023⧉ -- the counterfactual 's inspections and standards work against: before the agency existed, workplaces killed workers at more than double today's daily pace, with a far smaller workforce.
- 's FY2026 appropriation ($629.3M) works out to about $4.84 per worker across the 130 million workers and its state partners cover -- funding both federal enforcement (1,292 of the agency's 1,810 FY2025 ) and the grants that fund state-run plans.
- FY2025's 30,273 inspections work out to roughly 3.8 per 1,000 of 's 8-million-plus covered worksites -- a rough intensity measure, not a coverage guarantee that any single workplace gets checked.
Your handles.* Report a workplace hazard or safety violation through 's file-a-complaint form -- complaints can be filed anonymously and cannot legally retaliate against you for filing. If you believe you were fired or punished for raising a safety concern, file with the Whistleblower Protection Program, which enforces 's own anti-retaliation provisions plus over 20 other federal whistleblower statutes. To comment on a proposed standard, watch the OSHA Federal Register page for open rulemakings.
Sources(5) ▾
- U.S. Government Publishing Office (GovInfo), H.R. 7148, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (Public Law 119-75) -- enrolled bill text (2026-02-03) — The enrolled, signed text of the omnibus that funds the Department of Labor, , and Education (among other titles) for FY2026; signed into law February 3, 2026 as Public Law 119-75. Contains the 'Occupational Safety and Health Administration -- Salaries and Expenses' appropriation heading with the enacted dollar figure and the state-grant 50-percent-match language. This is the primary source for this entry's FY2026 budget KPI. govinfo.gov · original document
- U.S. Department of Labor, FY 2026 Congressional Budget Justification -- Occupational Safety and Health Administration (2025-05-30) — 's own congressional budget justification, filed with its FY2026 budget request. Its 'Amounts Available for Obligation' (-4) and 'Summary Budget Authority and by Activity' (-7/-8) tables report FY2025 ENACTED budget authority ($632,309,000) and staffing (1,810 ) by activity, plus the FY2026 request the agency was submitting -- these enacted FY2025 figures are this entry's most recent confirmed federal headcount and per-activity budget breakdown. Direct dol.gov fetch returned HTTP 403 (known agency-site block); the Wayback capture above is the one-click original-document link. dol.gov · original document
- Occupational Safety and Health Administration (osha.gov), Commonly Used Statistics (2026-07-13) — 's own reference page of headline statistics: worker/worksite coverage, inspector count, and the long-run fatality-rate and injury-rate comparison (1970/1972 vs. 2023) that this entry's counterfactual paragraph relies on. Self-published by the agency and not independently audited (hence Admiralty credibility 2), but it is 's own official framing of its own record, cited as such. osha.gov · original document
- Occupational Safety and Health Administration (osha.gov), Current Enforcement Summary (2026-07-01) — 's own running FY2020-FY2025 inspection-activity table (total, programmed, unprogrammed, and by-trigger breakdowns), the source for this entry's FY2025 workload numbers. Wayback's Save Page Now returned an outage error (HTTP 520) on the single capture attempt permitted this iteration; no prior snapshot existed. The live osha.gov page itself was fetched directly and is the citation; archiveUrl is recorded null and is non-blocking. osha.gov
- U.S. Department of Labor, The Job Safety Law of 1970: Its Passage Was Perilous (2011-01-01) — 's own official history essay (by Judson MacLaury, historian) on the passage and signing of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 -- the source for this entry's identity/founding paragraph. Direct dol.gov fetch returned HTTP 403 (known agency-site block); the Wayback capture above is the one-click original-document link. dol.gov · original document
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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration was created when President Nixon signed the Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970⧉ into law on December 29, 1970, giving the federal government authority to set and enforce workplace safety standards for most private-sector workers. sits inside the Department of Labor. Where a state runs its own -approved plan, federal grants must cover at least half of that program's cost⧉; everywhere else, federal enforces directly.