OSHA’s 2024 ITA Data: What the Latest Injury and Illness Filings Reveal

Quick Hits

• OSHA’s 2024 Injury Tracking Application (ITA) cycle expanded electronic reporting, providing richer case-level detail for large establishments in high-hazard industries, enhancing OSHA’s ability to target inspections and enforcement.
• Healthcare, transportation/warehousing, manufacturing, and retail trade continued to report the highest volumes of recordable cases, with construction also showing high rates of severe outcomes.
• OSHA’s enforcement focus remains on recordkeeping compliance, with targeted inspections in high-hazard sectors based on detailed ITA data.

Developments and Trend Lines in the 2024 Data—and Why They Matter

OSHA’s expanded electronic reporting rule requires certain establishments with one hundred or more employees in designated high‑hazard industries to submit case-level information from Forms 300 and 301, in addition to Form 300A summaries (employers with 20-249 employees in certain high-hazard industries must also submit that data electronically). Practically, that means the 2024 public posting includes broader, more detailed insights into “what happened,” “to whom,” and “how severe,” not just topline totals. For safety leaders, this shift turns the ITA into a more actionable, hazard-specific dataset—and for OSHA, a more precise targeting engine for inspections, outreach, and recordkeeping enforcement.

Several realities remain unchanged. ITA submissions cover only establishments meeting industry/size triggers; NAICS coding and some inputs are self-determined and self-reported; and both under- and over-reporting are possible.

Industries With the Most Reported Incidents

The sectoral picture presented in the 2024 data appears remarkably stable. Four industries continued to report the highest volumes of recordable cases in the public ITA data: health care and social assistance, transportation and warehousing, manufacturing, and retail trade.

Construction remained a top hazard sector, with fewer total recordables than the four above but disproportionately high rates of severe outcomes, such as falls and struck-by/caught-in events.

Wholesale trade, public administration, and accommodation/food services also contributed sizable case totals, consistent with recent years.

The table below summarizes directional change rather than raw counts.

Sector	2024 vs. 2023	Notes on composition and case mix
Healthcare and social assistance	Flat to slightly up	Persistent patient‑handling, workplace violence, and exposure-related cases; significant DAFW/DJTR volume
Transportation and warehousing	Flat to slightly up	Material handling/PIT incidents, overexertion, vehicle-related events; continued severity burden
Manufacturing	Flat	Energy control, machine guarding, chemical/respiratory, and hearing loss feature prominently
Retail trade	Flat	Overexertion, slips/trips/falls, and stock-handling injuries concentrated among laborers and stockers
Construction	Flat	Fall protection-related events dominate severe outcomes; ladders, scaffolding, and struck-by hazards
Wholesale trade	Flat	Material handling and powered industrial truck hazards mirror warehousing patterns

Severity and Case-Type Patterns

A large minority of cases involved days away or job transfer/restriction, with double-digit median days not uncommon in transportation/warehousing and healthcare. The occupations most frequently represented—laborers/freight/material movers, stockers/order fillers, registered nurses and nursing assistants, truck drivers, and couriers/messengers—closely match the sectors with the highest totals. Sector-specific patterns continued as well: respiratory and exposure-related conditions feature in healthcare; hearing loss and energy-control hazards recurred in manufacturing; falls and struck‑by/caught‑in hazards dominated in construction; and powered industrial truck (PIT)/material handling risks remained prevalent across wholesale and warehousing.

2024 vs. Prior Years

Three signals stand out when comparing 2024 to the most recent publication cycles. First, sector ranking is stable: the same four sectors dominate reported totals, suggesting a durable concentration of recordable cases and a durable enforcement focus. Second, total Form 300A‑reported cases across the covered population remain directionally aligned with the prior year. Third, the new case-level submissions bring richer granularity—narratives, occupation codes, case types, and outcomes—without materially shifting the sectoral leaderboard.

Enforcement Themes Linked to 2024 Data

Several enforcement currents align closely with the 2024 reporting profile. OSHA continues to emphasize recordkeeping compliance and is targeting nonsubmitters using ITA data to identify establishments for programmed inspections in high-hazard sectors. Most‑cited standards mirror high-volume hazards: fall protection and related training dominate in construction; hazard communication and respiratory protection feature prominently in manufacturing and healthcare; and lockout/tagout, powered industrial trucks, scaffolding, machine guarding, ladders, and eye/face protection remain common across logistics, construction, and manufacturing. The publication of partial Form 300/301 case-detail data gives the agency new hooks—occupational codes, injury narratives, and specific exposures—to refine outreach and inspection targeting.

Practical Takeaways for Employers

Healthcare, transportation/warehousing, manufacturing, and retail can expect continued attention from OSHA’s data-driven targeting and outreach. Employers in these sectors may want to prioritize controls that align with their case mix—patient and material handling and broader ergonomics programs; PIT and vehicle operations; energy control and machine guarding; chemical and respiratory protection; and slip, trip, and fall prevention.

Construction employers can anticipate an enforcement spotlight on fall protection, scaffolding, ladders, and struck-by/caught-in hazards, with heightened attention to field-level verification of controls and supervision quality.

Across all covered establishments, tight recordkeeping is a compliance imperative. Employers may want to ensure that their reports include accurate NAICS coding, verify headcount thresholds, and reflect timely, complete ITA data—including privacy-compliant Form 300/301 case details where required. The data employers submit is increasingly the data OSHA uses to identify unaddressed risk.

The Bottom Line

The 2024 ITA publication doesn’t rewrite the injury map—but it does sharpen it, both for OSHA and for those that might access the data, including labor unions, personal injury lawyers, and various interest groups. The same sectors are driving the largest volumes, the same hazard families are producing the most severe outcomes as in 2023, and OSHA’s most-cited standards continue to reflect those realities.

What has changed is the granularity available to both regulators and employers. Employers that use this detail to target the right controls, verify them in the field, and keep submissions accurate and timely will be aligned with where enforcement is headed—and, more importantly, where risk truly resides.

Ogletree Deakins’ Workplace Safety and Health Practice Group will continue to monitor developments and provide updates on the Workplace Safety and Health blog as additional information becomes available.

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