Research—
Workplace falls: 10,775 severe injuries in the federal OSHA archive
Falls and slips account for 10,775 federal OSHA severe-injury reports since 2015. Hospitalizations dominate, amputations are rare, and construction is the epicenter with more than a quarter of them. Where falls hurt workers most.
Falls remain one of OSHA's “Fatal Four” construction hazards and a leading cause of serious injury across every industry. The federal OSHA severe-injury archive holds 10,775 reports whose narrative describes a fall or slip — roughly one in ten of all 105,313 severe injuries indexed here.
Falls break bones, they rarely amputate
Only 802 fall reports (7%) involved an amputation — far below the 26% archive-wide rate. Falls send workers to the hospital with fractures, head trauma, and spinal injuries, not severed limbs, which is why hospitalization is the near-universal outcome in this group.
Construction is the epicenter
2,835 of these falls — more than a quarter — come from construction (NAICS 23) alone, more than any other sector, reflecting work at height on scaffolds, roofs, and ladders. Read the full construction severe-injury breakdown.
Where falls send workers to the hospital
The state ranking tracks federal OSHA jurisdiction; state-plan states report separately. Each count opens the live records.
| State | Fall-related severe injuries |
|---|---|
| Texas | 1,676 |
| Florida | 1,358 |
| Pennsylvania | 908 |
| Ohio | 874 |
| Georgia | 530 |
Browse all 10,775 fall-related severe-injury records, or see how injuries break down by state.
Method & source
All counts are live queries against the federal OSHA Severe Injury Report archive (events dated 2015-01-01 through 2025-10-31) indexed by Safety Incidents, which holds 105,313 reports. The fall figure counts reports whose narrative matches fall OR fell; the amputation subset and construction subset are of those 10,775 reports. Reproduce any figure by applying the same filters on the search page. Severe-injury reporting has been mandatory for most employers under federal OSHA jurisdiction since January 2015; the 22 states running their own OSHA-approved plans report separately and are under-represented here — see the 22-state blind spot.