Warning

OSHA penalties and citations

Danger
Stencil print of a notice pinned to a site fence beside a locked gate
Penalty maximums are adjusted annually for inflation, so last year’s number is always wrong.

Published 2026-09-04 · 9 min read · updated 2026-10-18 · sources checked 2026-10-18

The maximums normally move every January. In 2026 they did not: the Department of Labor cancelled the 2026 inflation adjustment because the October 2025 CPI-U the law requires was never published, so the 2025 figures still apply to penalties assessed after January 15, 2026 — read from osha.gov/penalties and the Federal Register on 2026-10-18, and worth re-checking before you quote them to anyone.

The amounts, as they stand now

Type of violationMaximum penalty
Serious$16,550 per violation
Other-Than-Serious$16,550 per violation
Posting requirements$16,550 per violation
Failure to Abate$16,550 per day beyond the abatement date
Willful or Repeated$165,514 per violation

Maximums that may be assessed after Jan. 15, 2026 (unchanged from 2025). Read from osha.gov/penalties on 2026-10-18.

Two things about that table are easy to miss. Failure to abate is per day, so a three-week delay on a $16,550 item is arithmetic nobody wants to do. And willful sits at exactly ten times serious.

States that operate their own Occupational Safety and Health Plans are required to adopt maximum penalty levels at least as effective as federal OSHA’s. State Plans are not required to impose monetary penalties on state and local government employers.

What each class means

  • Serious — there is a substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result, and the employer knew or should have known of the hazard. “Should have known” is doing most of the work in that sentence.
  • Other-than-serious — a violation with a direct relationship to safety and health, but unlikely to cause death or serious harm. Recordkeeping gaps land here.
  • Willful — intentional disregard of, or plain indifference to, the requirement. A hazard documented on your own inspection sheet and left open is the shape of evidence this classification is built from.
  • Repeated — a substantially similar violation previously cited and final. It travels between your own sites, which is why a citation at one job matters at every job.
  • Failure to abate — the condition from a previous citation still exists past the abatement date.

Warning

A signed, dated inspection sheet with the same finding open two weeks running is documented employer knowledge. Close findings on the sheet or do not write the sheet — and the first option is the only good one.
Class
Stencil print of a gavel resting on a block
A gavel resting on the block — the class of the violation, not the size of the hazard, sets the number.

What gets cited on construction sites

Federal OSHA’s most frequently cited standards in fiscal year 2024, in order: fall protection general requirements (1926.501), hazard communication (1910.1200), control of hazardous energy (1910.147), ladders (1926.1053), respiratory protection (1910.134), powered industrial trucks (1910.178), fall protection training (1926.503), scaffolding (1926.451), eye and face protection in construction (1926.102) and machine guarding (1910.212).

Five of the ten are construction standards, and the top one and the seventh are the same subject seen twice — the system and the training for it. That pairing is worth reading as a warning: a compliant guardrail and no training record is still two citations.

What the duty actually requires is in OSHA fall protection requirements.

The abatement clock and the contest window

A citation carries an abatement date. From receipt you have 15 working days to file a Notice of Contest, and that window is unforgiving — miss it and the citation and penalty become a final order not subject to review.

Before contesting, ask for an informal conference with the Area Director. It is quick, it costs nothing, and it is where most penalty reductions and abatement-date extensions actually happen. Contesting is the tool for when you disagree with the citation itself, not with the amount.

Whatever you do about the paper, abate the hazard immediately. Failure to abate is charged per day, and the abatement is the only part of this that stops someone getting hurt.

Clock
Stencil print of an inspector with a clipboard at a site gate
Fifteen working days from receipt — the window closes whether or not anyone opened the envelope.

The rule text, section by section

Every paragraph cited above, in the words of the standard itself. Open a section number to read it; the wording is quoted from the current eCFR text of title 29, read on 2026-10-18; “…” marks text left out.

The adjusted civil penalties for penalties proposed after January 15, 2025 are as follows: (1) Willful violation. The penalty per willful violation under section 17(a) of the Act, 29 U.S.C. 666(a), shall not be less than $11,823 and shall not exceed $165,514.

Repeated violation. The penalty per repeated violation under section 17(a) of the Act, 29 U.S.C. 666(a), shall not exceed $165,514.

Serious violation. The penalty for a serious violation under section 17(b) of the Act, 29 U.S.C. 666(b), shall not exceed $16,550.

Failure to correct violation. The penalty for a failure to correct a violation under section 17(d) of the Act, 29 U.S.C. 666(d), shall not exceed $16,550 per day.

Any notice of proposed penalty shall state that the proposed penalty shall be deemed to be the final order of the Review Commission and not subject to review by any court or agency unless, within 15 working days from the date of receipt of such notice, the employer notifies the Area Director in writing that he intends to contest the citation or the notification of proposed penalty before the Review Commission.

Sources, with the date each was read

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