Cal/OSHA Enforcement in Santa Clara County

Cal/OSHA does not publish county-level enforcement statistics. This page is the Santa Clara County cut, computed from the federal enforcement data: the 1,062 inspections opened at county addresses from January 2020 through December 2025, and the 2,421 citations they produced, carrying $6.1 million in penalties as they currently stand.

Santa Clara County is the least-inspected large county in California: about 16 annual inspections per 100,000 covered workers, against a state rate of roughly 40, the bottom of our county breakdown. Our San Jose city page covers the 429 inspections at San Jose addresses; this page adds Santa Clara (96), Sunnyvale (94), Gilroy (75), Milpitas (60), Palo Alto (58), and the rest of the county.

What gets cited in Santa Clara 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 leads narrowly over §3395 heat illness prevention — 257 to 247 — and §1509, the construction IIPP, is third at 216 citations, 1.7x its statewide share, the same requirement as §3203 under the Construction Safety Orders. §341, permit requirements — the permits construction work such as excavation and scaffolding needs before it starts — is doubled at 47 citations, 2.4x. §3205, COVID-19 prevention, still shows at 62.

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 →

Construction takes a third of the county’s citations

Construction accounts for 850 citations — 35% of the county’s total, against 26% statewide. Hospitality (sector 72) takes 12% against 7%. The ten most cited industry groups:

Residential building construction leads at 270 citations, 2.0x its statewide share, with foundation and exterior contractors (174) and nonresidential builders behind it. Restaurants are second at 232 citations, 3.0x their statewide share — the finding the San Jose city page made inside the city limits holds across the county.

Follow-up inspections run high; complaints and referrals run low

Share of the 1,062 county inspections opened 2020–2025, by trigger, against the statewide mix:

Accident investigations, at 35%, run a few points above the state, and planned inspections match it exactly. Related and follow-up inspections are 17% of the county’s openings against 11% statewide — inspections opened in connection with another inspection. Complaints (17% against 24%) and referrals (4% against 8%) both run well 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 Santa Clara 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 Santa Clara 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 — 12 of the 1,062 — 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.