OSHA Penalties Won’t Increase in 2026
Every year OSHA’s penalties increase at the rate of inflation, but this year the Office of Management and Budget ruled out an increase on a technicality, according to the Confined Space newsletter. The increase was to take place in January, based on the Consumer Price Index (which measures inflation) reported for October, 2025. But the government was shut down last October and the CPI was not issued. In April OMB director Russell T. Vought announced there would be no penalty increases this year for federal enforcement agencies.
In 2015, Congress passed legislation which raised OSHA penalties to $12,471 for a serious violation and $124,709 for a willful or repeat violation and required annual increases pegged to the inflation rate reported for the previous October.
The latest increase in 2025 put serious penalties at $16,550 and willful/repeat penalties at $165,514.
Those are the maximum allowed. After settlement reductions, the average OSHA penalty that employers pay for a serious violation is only $4,678 for federal OSHA and $2,720 for OSHA state plans, according to the Confined Space article.
“OSHA penalties have never exactly been crushing,” writes Jordan Barab, former senior OSHA manager and author of the Confined Space newsletter.
“It’s possible that a business could rack up several serious violations in one citation, but penalties ranging between $4,000 and $20,000 aren’t going to have a major impact from the bottom line of a medium-sized or large corporation,” Barab says.
Barab argues that “already low OSHA penalties” coupled with the number of OSHA inspectors currently at an all-time low is eroding the agency’s ability to execute two elements of enforcement: the likelihood of getting caught combined with the impact of getting caught.
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