How to Check an Employer’s OSHA History
A 5-minute walkthrough for workers, hiring managers, and researchers.
Before accepting a job, signing a contract, or buying a property from a business, you can see the federal safety record. Every U.S. employer with an OSHA inspection in the past five years is in our index, sourced directly from the Department of Labor’s Open Data Portal and updated daily.
Step 1 — Search this site
Use the search bar at the top of any page to look up an employer by name. You can also filter by state or NAICS industry code. Search results show inspection count, violation count, accidents, and total penalty assessment at a glance.
- By name: “Acme Construction” shows every Acme Construction location with an OSHA record.
- By state: Browse /states to see employers in a specific jurisdiction.
- By industry: Browse /industry for NAICS-level safety comparisons.
- Near you: Use /nearby to find OSHA-inspected employers around your current location.
Step 2 — Read the inspection detail
Each inspection page shows the date, scope (Safety or Health), every citation issued, the violation classification (Willful, Repeat, Serious, or Other-than-serious), the federal standard cited, and the dollar penalty assessed.
Willful and Repeat violations are the strongest signals of systemic safety problems. A single Serious violation indicates a substantial probability of death or serious harm at the time of inspection. See our explainer on the four classifications for context on each tier’s legal weight.
Step 3 — Cross-reference with OSHA directly
For a high-stakes decision (employment, contracting, litigation prep), verify our normalized data against OSHA’s own search tools:
- OSHA Establishment Search — official record per company.
- OSHA Accident Search — workplace fatality and injury records.
- DOL Open Data Portal — raw federal data.
Our index is rebuilt daily from the same upstream source, so the data should match. If you find a discrepancy, please let us know.
Step 4 — If you spot an active hazard, file a complaint
If you see conditions that suggest active workplace danger, OSHA accepts confidential complaints from employees, former employees, and representatives. Federal law protects you from retaliation. See how to report an unsafe workplace for the formal complaint paths.
Related reading
- How to research an employer’s safety record
- Willful vs. serious vs. repeat OSHA violations
- OSHA glossary — definitions of every term used on this site.
- Our methodology — how we normalize and verify the federal data.