Grade C (Average)

A C grade indicates a mixed enforcement record that hovers near the industry average. There are typically credible safety wins offset by recurring citations in at least one category, and the variance year-to-year is wide. C is also the most common grade in the dataset because a large share of mid-size employers in inherently risky industries cluster around their sector's median. The grade alone does not signal a problem — it indicates that the company is statistically average for its industry, which warrants a closer look at the specific OSHA standards cited.

8,653 companies (58.9% of the dataset) carry a C grade — the largest single tier. The concentration here reflects how the scoring model handles companies whose performance closely tracks their industry's median across all four scoring factors.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) publishes the controlling standards, and the Enforcement Results Data files are the primary public source for the underlying citation history that feeds the grade.

The Workplace Safety Score is a 0-100 composite weighted across four factors: violation rate versus the industry average (40%), share of citations classified as serious or willful (25%), repeat-citation ratio (20%), and average penalty per inspection versus the industry baseline (15%). Each factor is normalized so that companies in inherently risky sectors (construction, manufacturing, warehousing, healthcare) are compared against their actual peers rather than against low-hazard office work.

Letter grades are assigned by score band: A for the highest tier, B for above-average, C for industry-average, D for below-average, and F for the worst-performing tier. Read the full methodology for the exact formula, score bands, and edge cases.

For workers, a C grade is a signal to do extra homework before accepting a role. The mid-tier classification means the company tracks its industry's median, which can mean either a stable safety program or one with documented hazards that have not been addressed. Ask the hiring manager which specific OSHA standards have been cited, what the abatement plan looked like, and whether the company offers paid time to attend safety training. Federal law gives every worker the right to refuse work they reasonably believe poses imminent danger.

Workers retain the full set of federal protections regardless of their employer's safety grade. They can file confidential complaints at osha.gov/workers/file-complaint, request an inspection, and refuse imminent-danger work without retaliation under Section 11(c) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The OSHA Workers' Rights page spells out the full set of protections, and industry-level injury benchmarks come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses.

Counts on this page come from OSHA's public Integrated Management Information System (IMIS) enforcement file, refreshed from the Department of Labor's Enforcement Results Data files. We aggregate citations at the establishment level using the federal employer identifier, then roll those records up to the parent company. Industry classification follows the NAICS code recorded by OSHA at the time of inspection.

The Workplace Safety Score is intentionally a proprietary composite — there is no official OSHA letter grade. The four factors and their weights are designed to reward companies with low citation density relative to industry peers and to penalize patterns of severity rather than isolated incidents. Read the full methodology for the exact formula and edge cases.