Considerable progress has been made in improving occupational safety in the United States and reducing workplace accidents and fatalities. A report published earlier this week by AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. federation of trade unions, shows that the number of fatal occupational injuries per 100,000 workers in the U.S. fell from 4.2 in 2006 to 3.5 in 2018. Despite the improvement, significant challenges still remain, such as reducing deaths among Latino workers who experienced 3.7 fatal occupational injuries per 100,000 people, a rate higher than the national average. Federal and state inspections by OSHA (The Occupational Safety and Health Administration) are an important element of the national occupational safety strategy but the agency's staffing and resources remain woefully inadequate to carry out its tasks.
In FY 2019, there were 1,767 OSHA inspectors operating across the U.S. and they were responsible for 147 million employees. That is just one inspector for every 83,207 employees and the total falls far short of a key benchmark set by the International Labor Organization which states that the number of inspectors in the U.S. should be 14,703. The report highlighted the sheer scale of the challenge facing OSHA in carrying out its inspections by providing an overview of the of the years needed to inspect all U.S. job sites in different states at the agency's current staffing levels. The task looks to be something of an Everest for OSHA and it would take 323 years to guarantee safety at all work sites in Arkansas alone. In South Carolina, Florida and Arizona, it would also take more than 250 years unless the situation changes for the overstretched agency.
*Click below to enlarge (charted by Statista)
Years needed for OSHA to inspect all U.S. job sites by state at its current staffing levels.
