Cal/OSHA Enforcement in Sacramento County

Cal/OSHA does not publish county-level enforcement statistics. This page is the Sacramento County cut, computed from the federal enforcement data: the 1,726 inspections opened at county addresses from January 2020 through December 2025, and the 2,491 citations they produced, carrying $4.8 million in penalties as they currently stand.

Sacramento County is inspected at about 41 annual inspections per 100,000 covered workers, in line with the state’s roughly 40, per our county breakdown — and the count jumped in 2025 to 452 openings, from 225 in 2020. Sites with a Sacramento city address account for 62% of the inspections; Elk Grove (159), Rancho Cordova (112), Folsom (86), Carmichael (51), and Citrus Heights (42) lead the rest.

What gets cited in Sacramento County

Average penalty is the penalty as it stands now, after any appeals and settlements, averaged across the row’s citations — as retrieved August 30, 2026; these figures may change as cases settle.

The §3203 IIPP and heat lead in their statewide order. §3205, COVID-19 prevention, is #3 with 151 citations — 3.2x its statewide share, as in Alameda County. The rest of the top ten: hazard communication (88, 1.4x), fire extinguishers (85, 1.5x), eyewash, respirators, ladders; §342 injury reporting and §3276 portable ladders carry the larger average penalties.

Free IIPP template. The §3203 program that leads this table — one section for each of the eight elements listed in §3203(a), plus the inspection and training record forms §3203(b) requires. PDF, no account. Request the template →

Restaurants are Sacramento County’s most cited industry

Construction accounts for 572 citations, 23% of the county’s total, under the state’s 26%. Hospitality (sector 72) takes 11% against 7% statewide, and other services — auto repair and personal services (sector 81) — 8% against 5%. The ten most cited industry groups:

Restaurants lead at 184 citations, 2.3x their statewide share. Statewide, restaurant inspections are complaint-driven. Auto repair (142, 1.5x) and janitorial and landscaping services (134, 1.6x) also run above the state.

Complaints outnumber accidents in Sacramento County

Share of the 1,726 county inspections opened 2020–2025, by trigger, against the statewide mix:

35% of the county’s inspections began with a complaint, against 24% statewide — more than the 26% that began as accident investigations. Statewide the order is reversed, with accidents at 31% and complaints at 24%. Planned inspections (18%) and referrals (5%) both run under the state.

Methodology

CompliantCA computed this analysis from the U.S. Department of Labor enforcement dataset (the OSHA Information System), which includes Cal/OSHA because California operates an OSHA-approved State Plan and includes federal OSHA’s California activity; retrieved August 30, 2026. Scope: inspections opened January 2020 through December 2025 at Sacramento County sites, and citation line items issued in the same window on those inspections, excluding citation records deleted in the source data.

Each inspection is assigned to the county by its five-digit site zip via the Census Bureau’s 2020 ZCTA-to-county relationship file, assigning each zip to the county holding the largest share of its land area, with the site city as fallback — the same method as our county breakdown, whose Sacramento row these totals match. City counts use the city on the inspected site’s address, which is the postal city rather than the municipal boundary. Federal OSHA’s own inspections at county addresses — 25 of the 1,726 — are included, matching our other city and region pages, and identified by the inspecting office on the record. Citations are grouped to the base section, so §3203(a) and §3203(a)(4) count together; industry groupings use the NAICS code on the inspection record; trigger shares use the inspection-type code, with the statewide column computed from all California inspections the same way. “Times the statewide share” compares an industry’s or standard’s share of the county’s citations with its share of all California citations in the window. The per-worker rate divides the six-year inspection count by six and by the county’s average covered employment 2020–2025 from the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, times 100,000; 2025 employment is preliminary. Penalty figures are the penalty as it stands now, after any appeals and settlements (the dataset’s “current penalty”), and change as cases settle. Cal/OSHA’s own statewide summaries are at DIR’s citation statistics pages.

A citation count says what inspectors cited, not what any employer must do — the standards themselves say that.