The headline numbers
49% of the 17,007 classified severe injuries (2015–2025).
Falls to a lower level — the single largest cause of severe construction injuries, ahead of struck-by (20.5%).
Share of classified injuries that involve an amputation — 2,842 in the construction subset nationally.
Why a contractor directory publishes this
Construction is dangerous work — these aggregate numbers show fractures, amputations, and falls at real scale. That is precisely why the contractor you hire should carry liability insurance and workers' compensation. If a worker is hurt on your property and the contractor is properly covered, the injury is on their policy. If the contractor is uninsured, an injury on your job can become your financial and legal problem. This study is the honest, aggregate case for verifying that coverage. It is not a safety scorecard for any individual business, and it implies nothing about whether any specific contractor is safe — there is no per-contractor data here, by design.
The diagnosis: nature of injury
What the injury actually was, as a share of the 17,007 classified severe-injury records, largest first. Fractures and amputations alone dominate — these are catastrophic, life-altering outcomes, not minor cuts and bruises.
- Fractures49%8,337
- Amputations17.4%2,955
- Soreness, pain, hurt-nonspecified injury8.3%1,413
- Cuts, lacerations7%1,197
- Traumatic injuries and disorders, unspecified3.4%570
- Internal injuries to organs and blood vessels of the trunk2.6%446
- Electrical burns, unspecified2.6%440
- Intracranial injuries, unspecified2.5%429
- Heat (thermal) burns, unspecified1.8%312
- Amputations, avulsions, enucleations unspecified1.8%309
- Puncture wounds, except gunshot wounds1.8%305
- Crushing injuries1.7%294
How it happened: the event mechanisms
The same injuries grouped by how they happened, as a share of the 10,160 classified events. We roll the raw OSHA event codes into hazard families. Falls to a lower level dominate — which is why fall protection is OSHA's most-cited construction standard year after year.
| Hazard family | Events | Share | Codes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Falls to a lower level | 5,057 | 49.8% | 6 |
| Struck by an object or equipment | 2,084 | 20.5% | 5 |
| Caught, compressed, or pinched | 1,559 | 15.3% | 2 |
| Environmental heat | 664 | 6.5% | 1 |
| Other mechanisms | 796 | 7.8% | 1 |
| All classified events | 10,160 | 100% | 15 |
The single most common individual event code is "Other fall to lower level, unspecified" (19.9% of all events). The full list of 15 raw codes is in the open data below.
The trend, 2015–2025
The count of construction establishments whose most recent severe-injury report fell in each year. Reports peaked in 2018 (1,895); 2025 sits -37.2% versus that peak. Read this as a recency/coverage signal, not a clean year-over-year incidence rate — the most recent years are still filling in, and each establishment is counted by the year of its latest report in the pull. The durable finding is the injury shape above; the annual counts are coverage.
- 20151,654
- 20161,801
- 20171,786
- 20181,895
- 20191,871
- 20201,647
- 20211,464
- 20221,448
- 20231,561
- 20241,552
- 20251,190
Methodology and honesty notes
- Aggregate only — no per-contractor, per-company, or per-state attribution. Every figure is a national injury-type total or a year count for the whole construction industry. No establishment name, EIN, or per-contractor row is included or reconstructable, and nothing here is tied to or implies anything about any specific contractor. Per-pro OSHA attribution is a defamation class; we publish the industry mix and nothing finer.
- Worker-safety context, not a contractor scorecard.We publish this as homeowner context — the concrete reason it matters that a contractor carries liability insurance and workers' compensation. It is not a basis for judging any individual business.
- Source. U.S. Department of Labor / OSHA — Severe Injury Reports + Injury Tracking Application — the national nature-of-injury and event-mechanism tables plus the year series, filtered to construction NAICS 236/237/238 over 2015–2025. A severe-injury report is a federally-mandated report of a work-related in-patient hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye (29 CFR 1904.39) — serious outcomes, not minor injuries and not citations or penalties.
- A shape-of-injury study, not an incidence total. The federal SIR program is the system of record for private construction only in federal-OSHA states, so this national mix under-weights the 21 OSHA State-Plan private-sector states. That biases the totals but not strongly the relative mix of injury types, which is what this study reports. For the per-state rate view, see the companion study.
- The year series is recency, not a rate. It counts each establishment by the year of its most recent report in the pull, so the latest years are still filling in. We label it a coverage trend and never compute a year-over-year incidence rate from it.
- Source + license. AGGREGATE ONLY — state and NAICS-sector rollups plus a national injury-type mix. No per-contractor row, name, or EIN is included or reconstructable. A 'severe injury report' is an employer's federally-mandated report of a work-related hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye (29 CFR 1904.39). The federal SIR program is the system of record for private-sector construction only in federal-OSHA states; the 21 listed OSHA State-Plan states run their own private-sector reporting, so their federal counts are an undercount and no per-1,000 rate is published for them. Public domain (17 U.S.C. 105). OSHA / U.S. Department of Labor + U.S. BLS. Re-published by ProFix as open data under CC-BY-4.0.
- Computed live. Every number is read from the committed aggregate seed at render time. Rebuild the seed from a fresher OSHA pull and this page updates automatically — nothing here is hardcoded.
Related ProFix research
This study is the injury-typecut. For where construction work is most dangerous by state, and the trades and licensing behind any state's contractor landscape, see:
Frequently asked questions
What is the most common type of injury in construction?
Fractures. Across the OSHA Severe Injury Reports for construction (Construction NAICS 236 + 237 + 238 (building, heavy/civil, specialty trade)), "Fractures" are the single most common nature of injury — 49% of the 17,007 classified injuries, ahead of Amputations (17.4%). The top three injury types account for 74.7%. These are aggregate national figures for the industry, not a record of any individual contractor.
How do construction workers most often get hurt?
Falls to a lower level — off roofs, ladders, scaffolds, and unprotected edges. They account for 49.8% of the classified severe-injury events, more than any other mechanism. Being struck by an object or piece of equipment is next (20.5%), then getting caught, compressed, or pinched (15.3%). This is exactly why fall protection is OSHA's most-cited construction standard year after year — and why the work is genuinely hazardous to the crews who do it.
What does this have to do with hiring a contractor?
Everything, and nothing about any one of them. Construction is dangerous work — these aggregate numbers show fractures, amputations, and falls at real scale. When you hire a contractor who carries proper liability insurance and workers' compensation, an injury on your property is covered by their policy, not your homeowner's policy and not your wallet. An uninsured contractor who gets hurt on your job can become your financial and legal problem. This study is the honest case for verifying that coverage — it does not, and cannot, say anything about whether any specific contractor is safe.
Is this a list of dangerous contractors?
No, and it deliberately cannot be. Every number here is an AGGREGATE — a national injury-type total or a year count for the whole industry. There is no per-contractor attribution anywhere, no business names, no license numbers. Attributing a severe-injury event to a named contractor in a public directory is a defamation class we will not touch. We publish only the industry-wide injury mix.
Are construction injuries going up or down?
In this dataset the count of construction establishments whose most recent severe report fell in 2025 is -37.2% versus the 2018 peak. Read that as a recency/coverage trend, not a clean year-over-year incidence rate — the series counts each establishment by the year of its LATEST report in the pull, and the most recent years are still filling in. The shape (which injuries dominate) is the durable finding; the annual counts are coverage.
Where does the data come from, and can I reuse it?
U.S. Department of Labor / OSHA — Severe Injury Reports + Injury Tracking Application (public records, public domain under 17 U.S.C. 105), the national injury-type tables filtered to construction NAICS 236/237/238 over 2015–2025. We read it through ProFix's committed aggregate seed and recompute every figure live. ProFix-published as open data (CC-BY-4.0), free to reuse with attribution.