Industry profile · NAICS 322121
Paper (except newsprint, uncoated groundwood) manufacturing
Workplace injury rates across 311 OSHA-reporting establishments in this industry, 2016–2024.
- 311
- Employers
- 3.1
- Avg TCR
- 3.3
- BLS benchmark
- 6,195
- Injuries
The industry picture
Employers in Paper (except newsprint, uncoated groundwood) manufacturing average 3.1 recordable injuries per 100 workers, below the BLS national benchmark of 3.3.
- 3.1
- avg TCR · reporting employers
- 3.3
- BLS national benchmark
- 311
- employers reporting
- 6,195
- recordable injuries
OSHA-reporting establishments skew toward larger, higher-hazard sites, so the reporting average runs above the BLS all-establishment benchmark.
What Paper (except newsprint, uncoated groundwood) manufacturing Safety Data Reveals
The Paper (except newsprint, uncoated groundwood) manufacturing sector (NAICS 322121) encompasses 311 distinct employer establishments currently reporting to OSHA's Injury Tracking Application. Across this cohort, workers have logged 6,195 recordable injuries during the 2016–2024 reporting window, producing an industry-weighted average Total Case Rate (TCR) of 3.1 injuries per 100 full-time workers per year. Because OSHA's ITA mandates submission from establishments with 250+ employees plus all high-hazard industries at 20+ employees, this dataset represents a structural slice of U.S. workplace risk rather than a voluntary sample.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a separate national benchmark TCR of 3.3 for this NAICS code, derived from the BLS Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses. Comparing the two, the ITA-reported rate of 3.1 is below the BLS benchmark, a gap that typically widens when the industry contains many large, high-exposure establishments required to file ITA reports. Employers in the table below are sorted so you can see how far individual establishments deviate from both the industry average and the national benchmark.
The practical value of industry-level safety data is threefold. First, jobseekers can gauge whether a prospective employer is better or worse than its industry peers, not just absolute injury counts, which tilt toward larger payrolls. Second, insurers and workers' compensation carriers use sector TCR as a baseline for experience-modification adjustments. Third, safety professionals benchmark their own programs against the cohort median. Use the grade-sorted employer list below to identify specific establishments within Paper (except newsprint, uncoated groundwood) manufacturing that outperform or underperform the sector average, and click through to each record for year-by-year injury, illness, and fatality breakdowns.
Employers in this industry, by injury rate
Page 1 of 7Safety grades are a transparent derived index PlainSafetyScore computes from public OSHA and BLS data, not an official OSHA rating. Read our methodology - how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.
Related
Working in Paper (except newsprint, uncoated groundwood) manufacturing?
This sector averages 3.1 against a BLS benchmark of 3.3 - but individual employers span the full A-to-F range.
- Look up a specific employer in this industry, not just the sector average. Look up an employer
- See how this industry ranks against every other sector. Industry rankings
- Learn what an A-to-F grade requires within an industry benchmark. How grades work
Sector figures use the credible-subset mean across reporting employers; a benchmark is not any single establishment's measured rate.
Every figure and grade on PlainSafetyScore is computed directly from OSHA's published Injury Tracking Application data and BLS industry benchmarks, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these safety grades, or report a data error. Data current as of 2016-2024 OSHA ITA release.