OSHA Enforcement Risk Lookup: State × Standard
Enforcement is not uniform: the same standard that dominates one state’s citations barely registers in another’s. Pick your state plan and a standard to see the verified FY2025 construction record — citations, penalties, the standard’s rank inside your state, and how your state compares to federal jurisdiction.
Every figure from OSHA’s published data (extracted 2026-08-08) · historical intensity, not an inspection probability
Maryland · 1910.1200 · FY2025 construction (NAICS 23)
609 citations · $218,147 in penalties
#1 of 20 reported
rank among the 20 standards Maryland reported
14.7%
share of Maryland’s construction citations
$358
average penalty per citation (current amounts)
Federal-jurisdiction comparison: 698 citations nationally at ~$1,410 per citation — Maryland averages less per citation ($358).
Who enforces what hardest
For each tracked standard: the state plan that cited it most in FY2025 construction, and the federal-jurisdiction total where the standard appears in the national top 10.
| Standard | Leading state plan | Its citations | States w/ data | Federal top-10 citations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1926.501 Fall Protection | Maryland | 434 | 18 | 6,772 |
| 1910.1200 HazCom / GHS | Maryland | 609 | 16 | 698 |
| 1926.1053 Ladders (Construction) | Maryland | 390 | 18 | 2,758 |
| 1926.451 Scaffolding | Virginia | 192 | 19 | 2,152 |
| 1910.134 Respiratory Protection | Tennessee | 66 | 18 | outside the construction top 10 — not published at this grain |
| 1910.147 Lockout/Tagout (LOTO) | Michigan | 10 | 7 | outside the construction top 10 — not published at this grain |
| 1910.178 Forklifts | Maryland / Michigan(tied) | 40 | 16 | outside the construction top 10 — not published at this grain |
| 1926.1052 Stairways (Construction) | Tennessee | 45 | 14 | outside the construction top 10 — not published at this grain |
| 1910.132 PPE General Requirements | Tennessee | 4 | 10 | outside the construction top 10 — not published at this grain |
| 1910.146 Confined Spaces | Michigan | 7 | 4 | outside the construction top 10 — not published at this grain |
Fall protection leads (alone or tied) in 15 of the 19 tracked plans. The 4 exceptions are the interesting ones — Alaska (1926.503), Iowa (1926.651), Maryland (1910.1200), Oregon (1926.1053) — and Maryland’s HazCom count exceeds several states’ fall-protection counts, the anomaly documented in the HazCom Enforcement Report.
How enforcement styles differ — and why it matters
Three patterns sit inside the table above, and each changes how a contractor should read their own result.
First, the leaders are not simply the biggest states. Maryland leads outright on fall protection and hazard communication, and ties Michigan on powered industrial trucks — an enforcement posture, not a function of size. Virginia leads on scaffolding while ranking fourth on fall protection, behind Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina. A state plan is a program with priorities, and the same written program will be probed differently on different sides of a state line.
Second, the general-industry standards tell a quieter story. Five of the tracked standards — respiratory protection, PPE, powered industrial trucks, confined spaces and lockout/tagout — sit outside the federal construction top 10 entirely, yet state plans still cite them on jobsites. Where your state shows a number for one of these, that is enforcement the national list would never have warned you about.
Third, low counts are not immunity. A state showing a handful of citations on a standard can still write yours: New Mexico's five permit-required confined-space citations were five real employers' citations. The honest use of this tool is prioritisation — put your program effort where your state's record says inspectors look first, without treating any blank cell as permission.
For the deepest layer — named enforcement cases and state context per combination — every result above links to its state-by-standard page, and the HazCom Enforcement Report reads the chemical-paperwork column of this data in full.
What this tool can and cannot tell you
- It can show what a state program actually cited: verified counts, penalty dollars, in-state rank and share, from OSHA’s published FY2025 construction data.
- It cannot give you an inspection probability — that would require inspection-level records and establishment counts this dataset does not contain, and no honest tool built on citation data alone can offer one.
- It cannot break down by industry: everything is construction (NAICS 23). All-industry enforcement is a different, larger picture.
- California and Washington are absent because their citations are not in federal CFR form — see the Cal/OSHA and Washington deep dives. Michigan IS included: it cites both its own Act sections and federal CFR, and the federal rows are the ones used here.
- Penalties are current amounts, after the reductions recorded so far; one fiscal year, no trend.
Sources & verification
Written and maintained by HazComFast. Data extracted 2026-08-08; page last reviewed August 2026:
- ·OSHA Frequently Cited Standards — FY2025, NAICS 23 (Construction), all establishment sizes
- ·OSHA-approved State Plans (jurisdiction reference)
General guidance, not legal advice. A simplified view of one year of published citation data — never a substitute for a compliance assessment of your own workplace.
Frequently Asked Questions
For a state plan and a standard, it returns the verified FY2025 construction enforcement record: how many citations the state wrote, the penalty total and average (current amounts), where that standard ranks among the standards the state reported, what share of the state's construction citations it represents, and — for the 4 standards with a federal row — how the state's average compares to federal jurisdiction. Every figure comes from OSHA's published Frequently Cited Standards data.
No, and we deliberately do not present one. Computing an inspection probability would require inspection-level records and establishment counts by state and industry — data this tool does not use. What it shows is historical enforcement intensity: what a state's program actually cited last fiscal year. That is a sound basis for prioritising your program, and an unsound basis for betting you won't be visited.
Because those are the state plans whose citation data can be attributed to federal standard numbers. Washington is the clean exception — its 31 construction rows are WAC 296-901 sections, none in CFR form. California returns 427 rows, but they are Title 8 numbers (1541.1, 1532.3…) that collide with federal 1926/1910 numbering, so mapping them would produce false matches. Michigan is included: it cites both its Act sections and federal CFR (57 of 136 rows). Puerto Rico's rows (45 federal-CFR rows of 51) are in the underlying extract, but it has no state record on this site, so it is neither offered in the selector nor counted in the totals.
That the standard did not register in the state's tracked construction rows for the fiscal year — a data statement, not a safety one. Small states can have real but sparse enforcement, a standard can be enforced under general-industry NAICS codes this dataset excludes, and one year is one year. It never means the duty is unenforced.
OSHA's public Frequently Cited Standards tool, filtered to construction (NAICS 23), all establishment sizes, FY2025 (October 1, 2024 – September 30, 2025) — extracted and verified 2026-08-08, stored as a verified constant, and rendered here directly from it. Penalties are current amounts, as OSHA's tool reports them, after the reductions recorded so far.
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