Cal/OSHA Enforcement Data & Analysis

Cal/OSHA publishes statewide summaries — an annual top-ten list of frequently cited standards and aggregate citation counts. It publishes no per-industry breakdowns, no per-size or per-city cuts, no citation-outcome rates, and no analysis of its accident investigation files. This page indexes CompliantCA’s analyses of exactly those gaps, computed from the raw federal datasets California enforcement reports into: the U.S. Department of Labor enforcement dataset (inspections, citations, penalties) and the OSHA accident investigation tables (case files, victims, narratives).

Every number we publish comes from a committed analysis script run against the source data, and every page states its method, filters, and retrieval date. How we write covers the discipline; each article’s methodology section covers its specifics.

What gets cited, by industry

The state’s top-ten list, cut to individual industries — each from the citation line items on that industry’s California inspections, 2020–2025:

• Construction — §1509, the construction IIPP requirement, leads.
• Manufacturing — §3203, the IIPP, leads by a wide margin.
• Restaurants — the IIPP leads by nearly 3 to 1.
• Agriculture — heat illness prevention leads, the IIPP close behind.
• Landscaping — heat leads, and tree work fills three of the top ten rows.
• Auto repair — the air-compressor tank permit makes the top three.
• Trucking & warehousing — the forklift rules cluster behind the IIPP.
• Health care — aerosol transmissible diseases leads.

Who gets inspected, and what it costs

• What triggers a Cal/OSHA inspection — accident investigations are 31% of the 42,309 California inspections opened 2020–2025; planned inspections, arriving with no trigger at all, are 21%.
• Citations by employer size — establishments with fewer than 50 employees received 68% of all Cal/OSHA citations issued 2020 through 2025.
• Inspections by county — all 58 counties ranked; Butte and Shasta run roughly eight times Los Angeles’s per-worker rate.
• Average penalties by outcome and employer size — the median cited inspection stands at $1,685 in penalties; inspections that followed a fatality average $14,695.
• How penalties are calculated — the §336 formula behind those numbers, with current amounts.
• How citations end: deletion and reduction rates by class — in the settled 2010–2017 pool, 7.5% of serious citations were deleted entirely; willful citations are deleted most often of any class and reduced least.
• Penalty reductions after citation — in settled cohorts, appeals and settlements removed about half of general-violation penalty dollars and 29% of serious ones.
• Repeat citations — 9% of California establishments cited in 2020–2021 were cited again at the same location within three years.
• Citations and penalties by year — 78,088 citations 2020–2025, and why heat citations peak in January.
• What happens after an inspection opens — 68% of inspections produce a citation, at a median of 127 days.

Enforcement by city

• Los Angeles — 4,088 citations 2020–2025, and 55% of California’s garment-industry citations.
• San Jose — restaurants are the most cited industry, ahead of Los Angeles’s total; referrals are nearly absent.
• San Diego — the highest planned-inspection share of the big cities, and the one substantial federal OSHA layer in California.

The accident investigation files

Computed from the case files behind the enforcement data — reportable deaths and hospitalizations, with victim detail and investigation narratives:

• Heat illness investigations — 381 published California investigations 2010–2025, 39 fatal; farm crews lead, and 94% of events fall in May through September.
• Tree work investigations — 453 case files, fatal at 29% against a 17% all-industry share; there is no off-season.
• Trucking & warehouse investigations — trucking’s files are fatal at 32%, warehousing’s at 11%; the forklift injures, the moving truck kills.

Standards in the data

• Cal/OSHA vs federal OSHA — nearly a third of California citations cite a standard with no federal counterpart.
• §3395, the outdoor heat standard — two-thirds of its 6,798 citations are for the written plan.
• §3396, the indoor heat standard — and its first 18 months in restaurants, the rule’s most-cited industry.
• Is SB 553 being enforced? — 416 citations under Labor Code §6401.9 since October 2024; 77% cite the plan itself.

Method, in short

Citations are counted per violation line item, excluding records deleted in the source data, grouped to the base section. Penalties are stated as they currently stand, after appeals and settlements, with retrieval dates on every page. Investigation counts are composition on closed, published case files — never year-over-year trends, because files publish years after events. Where an analysis has known biases — postal-city boundaries, county assignment from zip codes, publication gaps — the page’s methodology section states them. Every page’s numbers are generated by a script committed alongside it, so any figure can be reproduced from the public source data.

Citing this data

These analyses are free to cite with attribution. A citation that serves your readers and ours: name CompliantCA, link the specific analysis page, and carry the time window — for example: “establishments with fewer than 50 employees received 68% of Cal/OSHA citations issued 2020–2025, per CompliantCA’s analysis of federal enforcement data.” Numbers change as cases settle and windows extend; the linked page always carries the current figure and its as-of date. Questions about a number, or a cut you need that we haven’t computed — ask us; we answer every question by email.