Research—
Manufacturing accounts for more than half of all workplace amputations reported to OSHA
Of the 27,770 amputation reports in the federal OSHA Severe Injury Reports archive, the three manufacturing sectors (NAICS 31–33) account for 15,310 — 55% of the national total. A data-driven breakdown by industry.
Federal OSHA has required employers to report every work-related amputation within 24 hours since 2015. As of this writing, 27,770 of those reports are indexed here — and more than half of them come from a single corner of the economy.
Grouping the amputation reports by the reporting establishment's primary NAICS sector, the three manufacturing sectors (NAICS 31, 32, and 33) together account for 15,310 amputation reports — 55% of the national total. No other sector comes close: construction, the next-largest, accounts for about one in ten.
Amputation reports by industry sector
The leading sectors, each linking to the live, filterable records behind the count:
| Industry sector (NAICS) | Amputation reports | Share of total |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturing — metals, machinery, equipment (33) | 7,171 | 25.8% |
| Manufacturing — paper, plastics, chemicals (32) | 4,723 | 17.0% |
| Manufacturing — food, textiles, apparel (31) | 3,416 | 12.3% |
| Construction (23) | 2,907 | 10.5% |
| Wholesale trade (42) | 1,595 | 5.7% |
| Administrative, support & waste services (56) | 1,143 | 4.1% |
| Retail trade (44) | 1,098 | 4.0% |
| Transportation (48) | 781 | 2.8% |
| Warehousing & postal (49) | 628 | 2.3% |
| Agriculture, forestry, fishing (11) | 497 | 1.8% |
The three manufacturing rows sum to the 15,310 figure above. The listed sectors do not add to 27,770 because the smaller sectors — utilities, information, finance, education, mining, and the rest — are omitted for brevity; each is individually searchable.
Why manufacturing dominates
The concentration is not a surprise so much as a quantification. Amputations in this dataset are overwhelmingly caused by unguarded or inadequately guarded machinery — the point-of-operation hazards on presses, saws, augers, conveyors, and food-processing equipment that OSHA's machine-guarding standard (29 CFR 1910.212) exists to control. Those machines live in manufacturing. The single largest slice, NAICS 33, covers fabricated metal, machinery, and equipment manufacturing — the plants where mechanical power presses and metal-forming equipment are densest.
How this was measured
Every figure above is a live query against the federal OSHA Severe Injury Reports this site indexes — records that employers were legally required to file within 24 hours of a work-related amputation, hospitalization, or loss of an eye. The counts reflect reports flagged as amputations and grouped by the reporting establishment's primary NAICS sector; click any row to see the underlying records. Figures are current as of the latest data snapshot shown on the home page, and will shift slightly as OSHA revises and extends the file.
Search the full archive by employer, hazard, equipment, body part, state, or industry at safetyincidents.org/search.