Congress gave OSHA $629 million. Its own numbers say that buys one inspection every 191 years.
Summary
The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 funds OSHA enforcement at $629,309,000, a cut from FY2025's $632,309,000, per the enacted law itself. The AFL-CIO's Death on the Job report counts 1,651 federal and state inspectors for 155 million covered workers — and federal OSHA's own inspection pace works out to once every 191 years per workplace, the slowest in the agency's 55-year history outside the pandemic.
Where the dollar goes
$629,309,000 sounds like a real budget until it's split across what is actually charged with doing. Enforcement — the inspectors, the citations, the whistleblower cases — gets 61 cents of every dollar. Voluntary compliance assistance, which is not enforcement, gets another 22 cents.
View data as table
| Enforcement (federal, state, whistleblower) | $385.5M | 61% of the budget |
|---|---|---|
| Compliance assistance (federal + state) | $141.4M | 22% of the budget |
| Standards, technical support & statistics | $80.0M | 13% of the budget |
| State training grants | $12.8M | 2% of the budget |
| Executive administration | $9.6M | 2% of the budget |
The enacted text is specific down to the dollar: $243,000,000 for federal enforcement, $120,000,000 capped for grants to state inspection programs under section 23(g) of the OSH Act, $22,500,000 for whistleblower protection. Compliance assistance — helping employers voluntarily meet standards, rather than inspecting whether they do — draws $141,422,000 combined. Training grants to states get $12,787,000. Running the agency itself costs $9,600,000. None of these numbers moved much from FY2025; what changed is what the same dollars now have to cover.
The inspector math didn't improve — it got worse
The dollar figure is flat-ish. The workforce behind it is not. In 1991, when the AFL- published its first Death on the Job report, had 1,953 federal and state inspectors combined. By 2025 that had fallen to 1,651 — 618 federal, 1,033 state — even as the workforce those inspectors are responsible for grew 44%, from 107.3 million covered workers in 1991 to 154,990,441 in 2025.
View data as table
| 1991 inspectors | 1,953 | federal + state combined |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 inspectors | 1,651 | 618 federal + 1,033 state |
Fewer inspectors covering more workers compounds directly into the ratio each one is responsible for.
View data as table
| 1991 | 1 : 54,952 | inspector-to-worker ratio |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 1 : 93,877 | inspector-to-worker ratio — down 70.8% |
One inspector per 54,952 workers in 1991 is now one inspector per 93,877 — a 71% deterioration in the ratio in 34 years. That number is a national average across every state and every federally-run jurisdiction. For federal specifically — the states and territories where itself, not a state plan, runs inspections — the AFL-'s report translates the current headcount directly into a visitation rate: at FY2025 staffing and inspection levels, it would take federal 191 years to inspect every workplace under its jurisdiction once. That is, per the report, the highest figure in the agency's history outside the COVID-19 pandemic — worse than the 84-year rate the same report calculated when it first started tracking the number in 1992.
The fine, when it lands, is not the deterrent
Fewer visits would matter less if the penalty for what inspectors do find were steep. It isn't. Per the same AFL- report, the average federal penalty for a serious violation in FY2025 was $4,678 — $2,720 for state-plan states. When a worker is killed on the job and the employer is cited, the median penalty was $16,550 under federal and $10,550 under state plans. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries — published Feb. 19, 2026, per the AFL-'s citation of the underlying release, since bls.gov did not serve the release directly to automated fetches at time of writing — counted 5,070 workplace deaths from traumatic injury in 2024, the most recent year on record. Against that toll, a median penalty of $16,550 for killing a worker is in the same range as one year of full-time earnings at the $7.25 federal minimum wage ($15,080) — not a number built to change a large employer's behavior.
The takeaway
- The budget barely moved; the coverage math did. 's FY2026 appropriation is $3,000,000 below FY2025's — under 0.5% — against a workforce is responsible for that has grown 44% since 1991.
- Federal 's own inspection math: once every 191 years. That is the agency's own year, and it is the worst on record outside the pandemic — more than double the 84-year rate the AFL- calculated in its first report, in 1992.
- The fine isn't the deterrent it sounds like. A median penalty of $16,550 for a workplace fatality, under federal 's FY2025 enforcement data, is the cost of doing business for most employers large enough to need inspecting.
"191 years" is federal 's own jurisdiction only (not the 28 states and territories that run -approved state plans), and describes the mathematical inspection frequency implied by FY2025 staffing and inspection counts — not a literal inspection schedule. The inspector-to-worker ratios cover federal and state inspectors combined, nationwide.
Sources
- Public Law 119-75, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, Division H (Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2026) — the enacted FY2026 "Salaries and Expenses" appropriation of $629,309,000, including the $120,000,000 cap on state grants under OSH Act section 23(g). Signed Feb. 3, 2026. govinfo.gov
- AFL-, Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect, 2026 (35th annual edition) — inspector headcounts (1991 vs. 2025), the 191-year federal inspection pace, worker-per-inspector ratios, the FY2016–2027 appropriations table by category, and average/median penalty figures for FY2025. aflcio.org
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, published Feb. 19, 2026 — 5,070 workplace deaths from traumatic injury in 2024, the denominator against which 's fatality-case penalties are weighed. bls.gov returned 403 errors to automated fetches at time of writing; figure verified via the AFL- report's direct citation of the release. aflcio.org
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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration exists to put a compliance officer inside any of the roughly 12 million workplaces under its jurisdiction, on a schedule frequent enough to matter. Congress just told it, in writing, how often that can happen. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (Public Law 119-75, signed Feb. 3, 2026) funds 's "Salaries and Expenses" account at $629,309,000 for the fiscal year — a small cut from FY2025's $632,309,000. Run that budget against the agency's own inspector count, compiled independently in the AFL-'s Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect report, and the arithmetic is not close: federal 's inspection pace works out to once every 191 years per workplace.