Research—July 11, 2026

Construction leads every industry for severe injuries — but manufacturing as a whole reports nearly twice as many

Construction (18,918) is the single largest sector in OSHA's severe-injury archive, but the three manufacturing sectors together account for 34,270 reports — 32.5% of the total. The full ranking across all 24 NAICS sectors.

Group the 105,313 severe injuries in the federal OSHA archive by the reporting establishment's primary industry, and one sector stands alone. Construction (NAICS 23) accounts for 18,918 severe-injury reports — 18.0% of the entire archive, the single largest of any two-digit sector.

But danger in American work is concentrated in manufacturing when you take it as a whole. The three manufacturing sectors — metals & machinery (33), paper, plastics & chemicals (32), and food, textiles & apparel (31) — together account for 34,270 reports, or 32.5% of the archive: nearly one in three severe workplace injuries, and almost double construction's share. Manufacturing's dominance is even sharper for amputations specifically, which we break out in Manufacturing accounts for more than half of all workplace amputations.

Severe-injury reports by industry sector

All 24 federal NAICS sectors, ranked. Each row opens the live, filterable records behind the count.

#	Industry sector (NAICS)	Severe-injury reports	Share of archive
1	Construction (23)	18,918	18.0%
2	Manufacturing — metals, machinery, equipment (33)	15,987	15.2%
3	Manufacturing — paper, plastics, chemicals (32)	10,927	10.4%
4	Manufacturing — food, textiles, apparel (31)	7,356	7.0%
5	Wholesale trade (42)	6,086	5.8%
6	Administrative, support & waste services (56)	5,860	5.6%
7	Retail trade — vehicles, building, food (44)	5,409	5.1%
8	Health care & social assistance (62)	4,982	4.7%
9	Transportation (48)	4,721	4.5%
10	Warehousing & postal (49)	4,608	4.4%
11	Mining, quarrying, oil & gas extraction (21)	2,836	2.7%
12	Retail trade — general, miscellaneous (45)	2,623	2.5%
13	Accommodation & food services (72)	2,152	2.0%
14	Other services (81)	2,011	1.9%
15	Agriculture, forestry, fishing & hunting (11)	1,875	1.8%
16	Professional, scientific & technical services (54)	1,739	1.7%
17	Utilities (22)	1,421	1.3%
18	Arts, entertainment & recreation (71)	1,378	1.3%
19	Public administration (92)	1,344	1.3%
20	Real estate, rental & leasing (53)	1,192	1.1%
21	Information (51)	974	0.9%
22	Educational services (61)	519	0.5%
23	Finance & insurance (52)	317	0.3%
24	Management of companies & enterprises (55)	46	0.0%

Method & source

Counts are live queries against the federal OSHA Severe Injury Report archive (2015-01-01 – 2025-10-31) indexed by Safety Incidents, grouped by the two-digit NAICS prefix of the reporting establishment's primary code. Shares are of the 105,313-report archive; about 32 reports lack a coded industry. Reproduce any figure by appending ?sector=NN to the search page, or browse all industries.