How the risk score is calculated
A transparent 0–100 measure of an employer's OSHA enforcement history.
Every company in OSHA IQ receives a safety risk score from 0 to 100, where higher means a worse enforcement record. The score is derived entirely from public U.S. Department of Labor / OSHA inspection and violation records — it reflects citation history, not a prediction or a judgment about any specific workplace today.
What goes into the score
For each company we compute per-inspection rates for the factors below, rank every company against the full dataset using its percentile, and combine those percentiles with the following weights:
| Factor | Weight | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Willful violations | 30% | Intentional disregard for worker safety. |
| Repeat violations | 25% | A sustained pattern of non-compliance. |
| Serious violations | 20% | Hazards with a substantial probability of death or serious harm. |
| Penalty amounts | 15% | Total assessed penalties, scaled per inspection. |
| Inspection frequency | 10% | How often the employer is inspected, normalized by years active. |
Normalization & recency
Because a company with more inspections would otherwise always look worse, every factor is measured as a rate per inspectionand then converted to a percentile across all companies, so the score reflects an employer's relative standing rather than its raw size. Violations in the last three years are weighted more heavily than older ones so that a company's recent trajectory carries more signal than distant history.
Score bands
An important caveat
The score summarizes historical enforcement data that may be incomplete or delayed and is matched to employers by name and location. It is informational only and must not be the sole basis for any hiring, contracting, insurance, or investment decision. Always verify against the official DOL/OSHA source.