OSHA serious risk concentration by sector
Hours-worked normalized view of serious injury patterns across manufacturing, aerospace-related manufacturing, air transportation, and telecommunications establishments.
Highest DART rate
5.06
Air transportation
per 200,000 hours
Leading fatality-rate sector
0.0043
Primary metals
18 deaths recorded
Heavy manufacturing mix
52.9% DJTR
47.1% DAFW share
restriction-heavy burden
Air transport vs telecom
+813%
DART rate gap
hours-normalized comparison
Takeaways
- Air transportation is the clearest hours-normalized outlier at 5.06 DART cases per 200,000 hours, well above food manufacturing at 2.70 and telecommunications at 0.55.
- Within air transportation, serious risk is dominated by days-away-from-work cases: 3.83 DAFW per 200,000 hours versus 1.23 DJTR.
- Heavy manufacturing shows a more balanced burden, with restriction and transfer cases slightly outweighing days-away cases, which points to ongoing capacity drag rather than only full absences.
- Fatality risk concentrates in different sectors than nonfatal disruption: primary metals leads at 0.0043 fatalities per 200,000 hours, followed by petroleum and coal products and nonmetallic mineral products.
How to read the rates
Primary lens
Per 200,000 hours worked
This is the main ranking basis, so larger employers do not dominate only because they employ more people.
Cross-check
Per 100 employees
Employee-normalized rates stay visible below as a compact cross-check rather than the primary sort order.
Ranking filter
≥20 establishments and ≥200,000 hours
59,972 establishments were analyzed, but only sufficiently exposed sectors are ranked to reduce tiny-denominator noise.
Highest-risk sectors by DART rate
Ranked by DART cases per 200,000 hours worked among sectors that pass the exposure filter.
Top-sector incident mix: DAFW, DJTR, and fatalities
Fatalities are plotted on a secondary axis because the rate scale is much smaller than nonfatal serious cases.
Heavy manufacturing vs air transportation: hours-normalized rate comparison
Separate small multiples keep DAFW, DJTR, and fatalities readable on their own rate scales.
Heavy manufacturing vs air transportation: share of severe events
This isolates the composition shift: air transportation skews toward days-away cases, while heavy manufacturing carries more restriction and transfer burden.
Hours-worked normalization vs employee normalization
The main ranking uses hours worked. The employee-based rate is shown here only as a quick sense check on whether the same sectors remain elevated when headcount is used instead of exposure hours.
| Sector | DART / 200k hours | DART / 100 emp | Hours worked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Air transportation | 5.06 | 4.30 | 813.3M |
| Leather & allied products | 4.36 | 4.17 | 24.8M |
| Food manufacturing | 2.70 | 3.64 | 3.73B |
| Wood products | 2.15 | 2.74 | 915.2M |
| Nonmetallic mineral products | 2.11 | 1.87 | 591.5M |
| Telecommunications | 0.55 | 0.48 | 416.5M |
Establishment outliers need exposure context
Extreme establishment-level rates can be informative, but many are driven by very small reported hour totals. They are useful as signals for review, not as a substitute for sector-level ranking.
| Establishment | Sector | State | Hours | DART cases | DART / 200k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fresno Shower Doors | Nonmetallic mineral products | CA | 50 | 4 | 16000.00 |
| Larry Methvin Installation-Ontario | Printing & related support | CA | 139 | 9 | 12949.64 |
| Kamps Newton | Wood products | IA | 47 | 3 | 12765.96 |
| KLS Doors, LLC COX | Printing & related support | CA | 35 | 2 | 11428.57 |
| WELDMAC MANUFACTURING COMPANY | Fabricated metal products | CA | 351 | 20 | 11396.01 |
| Larry Methvin Installation-Lodi | Printing & related support | CA | 42 | 2 | 9523.81 |