Employer Workplace Safety Scores

Each employer in our dataset receives an A-F safety grade derived from its OSHA-reported injury and illness data, normalized against the establishment's industry peers and total hours worked. The grade compares the establishment's Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) and Days Away, Restricted, or Transferred (DART) rate to the median for the same NAICS industry code. A-grade establishments have rates below the 25th percentile of their industry; F-grade establishments have rates above the 90th percentile. The grade is a relative safety signal, not an absolute measure of workplace conditions.

The Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) is the OSHA-standard injury frequency metric. The formula is: (Number of OSHA-recordable injuries and illnesses × 200,000) / Total hours worked by all employees in the year. The 200,000-hour constant equates to 100 full-time employees working 40 hours per week for 50 weeks. A TRIR of 3.0 means three recordable injuries per 100 full-time employees per year. Industries vary widely — the all-industry private-sector average has hovered around 2.7 in recent years, while construction and manufacturing run higher.

DART stands for Days Away, Restricted, or Transferred — the rate of workplace injuries and illnesses serious enough that the affected worker either missed days from work, returned with restricted duties, or was transferred to a different job because of the injury. The formula uses the same 200,000-hour denominator as TRIR. DART is a useful complement to TRIR because it filters for severity: a workplace can have a low overall TRIR but a high DART rate, signaling that when injuries occur they are serious. Both rates are reported on OSHA Form 300A.

A recordable injury or illness is one resulting in death, days away from work, restricted work or job transfer, medical treatment beyond first aid, loss of consciousness, or a significant work-related diagnosis. First-aid-only treatment (cleaning a minor wound, using non-prescription medication at non-prescription strength, applying a bandage) is not recordable. The OSHA 1904 regulations define each category in detail. Employers with 11 or more employees in covered industries must maintain Forms 300, 300A, and 301; the 300A summary is publicly disclosed for many industries via Injury Tracking Application data.

OSHA collects Form 300A summaries through the Injury Tracking Application (ITA) annually, with employers in covered industries required to submit data for the prior calendar year by March 2 of the following year. OSHA publishes processed ITA datasets approximately 4 to 6 months after the submission deadline. PlainSafetyScore refreshes from each ITA release as it becomes available and surfaces the source-year on every employer page. Newly covered establishments may take a refresh cycle to appear; confidential or withheld submissions are excluded.

OSHA classifies violations by severity: De Minimis (no penalty), Other-than-Serious, Serious, Repeat, and Willful. A Willful violation is the most severe — issued when the employer either intentionally disregarded the requirement or showed plain indifference to employee safety. Willful violations carry the highest penalties (up to roughly $165,000 per violation under current statutory caps) and can support criminal referral if a willful violation contributes to a worker fatality. Willful citations are a particularly strong negative signal in our employer-level safety summaries.