New OSHA-based analysis finds 35.2% of U.S. workplace injuries are serious

SDS Manager’s new benchmark on federal injury data shows that more than one in three recordable workplace injuries in the U.S. leads to days away from work or death. The analysis finds sharp industry differences, with transportation and warehousing near half serious injuries and educational services at the low end.

Why it matters: - SDS Manager’s new Serious Injury Share metric shows that injury counts alone can understate risk when a growing share of cases are severe. - In the latest complete federal dataset, 35.2% of roughly 1.49 million recordable U.S. workplace injuries led to days away from work or death. - The finding gives safety teams a second benchmark to track alongside total incident counts. - The measure matters because a lower injury count can still mask worse outcomes if the remaining cases are more severe.

What happened: - SDS Manager released a new analysis on July 23, 2026, using the most recent complete Occupational Safety and Health Administration injury data available. - The company introduced the Serious Injury Share, or SIS, as the percentage of recordable injuries that are severe rather than minor. - The analysis found that the remaining 64.8% of recordable injuries were resolved with first aid or light duty. - Founder Erlend Bruvik said safety teams should pay as much attention to severity as to volume because one industry can run close to half serious injuries while raw incident totals hide the real risk.

The details: - Transportation and warehousing posted the highest Serious Injury Share among major industries at 46.1%. - Educational services posted the lowest share at 25.1%. - Wholesale trade reached 39.6%. - Public administration reached 39.1%. - Administrative and waste services reached 37.8%. - The median days-away case kept a worker off the job for nine days. - The average recovery stretched to about 36 days when longer recoveries were included. - OSHA released the dataset in 2025, and the filings reflected in it were due through early 2026. - Complete 2025 data will not be finalized until 2027, making 2024 the current benchmark safety leaders are using for 2026 planning. - A full analysis and industry breakdown is available in the company's announcement.

Between the lines: - The analysis shifts attention from how many injuries happen to how damaging they are. - The nearly two-to-one spread between the safest and most dangerous industries suggests severity risk is highly uneven across the U.S. economy. - For safety programs, the message is to pair case-count tracking with severity tracking and to treat every serious injury as a trigger for a structured investigation and verified fix.

What's next: - Safety teams are likely to use SIS as a planning metric while 2024 remains the benchmark year for 2026 priorities. - Employers will continue working from incomplete 2025 data until OSHA finalizes the full dataset in 2027. - SDS Manager is positioning SIS as a recurring yardstick for comparing industries and spotting whether safety performance is truly improving.

The bottom line: - More than one in three U.S. workplace injuries in the latest federal dataset is serious, and the gap between industries is wide enough to change how safety leaders measure risk.