Last Updated: June 30, 2026

Manufacturing Injury Rates by Industry: 2026 Benchmark Report

A plant's safety record needs context. A 2.8 total recordable incident rate can look rough in electronics assembly, acceptable in food processing, and excellent in a sawmill. This report gives safety managers, plant leaders, insurers, and industrial marketers a clean set of manufacturing injury rate benchmarks by industry.

The main benchmark is the Bureau of Labor Statistics total recordable case rate, usually called TRC, TRIR, or recordable injury rate. The latest national BLS table puts manufacturing at 2.7 recordable cases per 100 full-time workers in 2024. That is higher than the 2.3 rate for all private industry, but the risk changes sharply once you break manufacturing into NAICS industries.

How to Read Manufacturing Injury Rates

BLS injury rates are normalized per 100 full-time workers, which lets a 40-person fabrication shop compare itself with a 900-person food plant. The 2024 Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses reported 2.5 million nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses in private industry. BLS also reported a private industry total recordable case rate of 2.3 in 2024, down from 2.4 in 2023.

For manufacturing, the two most useful numbers are TRC and DART. TRC counts recordable injuries and illnesses. DART counts cases with days away from work, job restriction, or transfer. The 2024 national industry table lists manufacturing at 2.7 TRC and 1.7 DART. A high DART rate usually means injuries are not just first-aid events. They are changing schedules, moving people to light duty, or taking workers off the floor.

OSHA puts the long view in perspective. Worker deaths across the United States fell from about 38 per day in 1970 to 15 per day in 2023. OSHA also reports that workplace injury and illness rates dropped from 10.9 incidents per 100 workers in 1972 to 2.3 per 100 workers in 2024. That progress is real. It also makes weak safety performance easier to spot because the benchmark keeps getting tougher.

Manufacturing Injury Rates by Industry

The table below ranks selected manufacturing industries from the latest BLS national industry rate table. The spread is wide. Beet sugar manufacturing had a 6.8 TRC rate and 4.6 DART rate in 2024, while textile product mills came in at 2.1 TRC and 1.3 DART. The all-manufacturing benchmark was 2.7 TRC and 1.7 DART.

Food and beverage categories dominate the high-rate end of the list. That makes sense if you've walked those floors. Employees work around washdown areas, knives, conveyors, forklifts, cold rooms, hot surfaces, compressed air, sanitation chemicals, packaging lines, and fast line speeds. The benchmark tells you where the risk is concentrated, but the cause is usually a mix of pace, ergonomics, machine guarding, housekeeping, and training.

A low rate does not mean low risk. It may mean lower physical exposure, better controls, fewer high-energy tasks, or fewer reportable incidents during the year. For small employers, one serious injury can swing the rate hard. That is why safety teams should compare a three-year internal trend with the BLS peer benchmark instead of overreacting to a single year.

Fatal Injury Benchmarks by Manufacturing Sector

Nonfatal injury rates are useful for routine benchmarking, but fatal injury data shows where the most severe failures happen. BLS counted 391 fatal work injuries in manufacturing in 2023. Fabricated metal product manufacturing recorded 59 fatal injuries, the highest count among the manufacturing sectors listed in the BLS fatal injury table.

The fatality ranking looks different from the nonfatal injury ranking because exposure is different. Fabricated metal plants have welding, cutting, grinding, overhead material movement, powered equipment, forklifts, cranes, and lockout tasks. Food plants report high nonfatal rates, but metal, wood, mineral, and primary metal sectors show how quickly high-energy work can turn catastrophic.

Manufacturing employers should not use fatal counts as a rate comparison unless they also account for employment size. Still, the count matters for program design. If a sector repeatedly shows contact incidents, guarding and lockout need more budget. If transportation leads, forklift, yard, dock, and roadway controls deserve more attention.

Common Fatal Incident Causes in Manufacturing

BLS event data shows why manufacturing safety cannot be reduced to slips and strains. Contact with objects and equipment caused 121 manufacturing fatalities in 2023, about 30.9% of the 391 fatal manufacturing injuries. Transportation incidents caused 80 fatal injuries, and falls, slips, and trips caused 70 fatal injuries.

The contact category deserves special focus. It includes workers struck by falling objects, caught in running equipment, hit by powered equipment, or crushed during material handling. OSHA's annual violation data reinforces the same point. Machine guarding, lockout tagout, hazard communication, fall protection, powered industrial trucks, and respiratory protection frequently appear in OSHA's most cited standards list. OSHA publishes the current list on its Top 10 Most Frequently Cited Standards page.

The National Safety Council estimates that work injuries cost employers, workers, and society $176.5 billion in 2023. NSC also reports that the total includes wage and productivity losses, medical expenses, administrative expenses, motor vehicle damage, and employer uninsured costs. That number is for all industries, not just manufacturing, but it explains why injury-rate benchmarking belongs in operations reviews and not only in the EHS binder.

Manufacturing Injury Rates vs. Other Sectors

Manufacturing is above the private-industry average, but it is not the only high-exposure sector. BLS lists transportation and warehousing at 3.6 TRC and 2.7 DART in 2024. Health care and social assistance also posted a 3.6 TRC rate and 2.2 DART rate. Retail trade came in at 3.1 TRC and 1.9 DART.

This comparison is helpful when executives ask whether manufacturing is uniquely risky. The better answer is more specific. Manufacturing has a higher recordable rate than construction in the BLS private-industry table, but construction has far more fatal work injuries. Transportation and warehousing has a higher TRC and DART rate than manufacturing. Health care has a similar recordable rate, driven by different hazards.

The main lesson is that rate comparisons need context. Use all-industry rates for a quick board-level snapshot. Use manufacturing rates for plant network comparisons. Use NAICS peer rates for actual goal setting.

How Plants Should Use These Benchmarks

Start with your OSHA 300A totals and calculate the same rates BLS uses. Compare your TRC, DART, days-away rate, restricted-duty rate, and first-aid pattern against the most relevant NAICS group. If you run multiple plants, rank each site against both the company average and the external benchmark. A site with a 2.9 TRC might need urgent attention in a low-risk assembly environment, while a 2.9 TRC in a high-risk food category may signal better than average controls.

Next, separate frequency from severity. A plant can have a moderate recordable rate and still carry unacceptable fatality exposure if it has poor lockout, weak machine guarding, overhead lifting hazards, forklift conflicts, or uncontrolled maintenance work. BLS fatal event data points straight at those high-energy tasks. NIOSH also provides an interactive worker health charting tool using BLS injury and illness data, useful for filtering patterns by industry and demographic group. See the NIOSH Worker Health Charts injury and illness dashboard.

Finally, tie the benchmark to budget. If your rate is worse than your peer group, the corrective action should not stop at a poster campaign. You may need guarding upgrades, better dust collection, ergonomic lift assists, better traffic separation, supervisor coaching, near-miss review, maintenance planning, or staffing changes. Liberty Mutual's Workplace Safety Index has repeatedly shown that overexertion, falls, and contact injuries drive large direct-cost categories across US workplaces. The 2023 index estimated the top 10 disabling injury causes cost employers $48.15 billion in direct workers compensation costs.

What the Benchmark Does Not Tell You

Injury rates are good scoreboards, but they are not a full safety program. A small plant can go a full year without a recordable case and still have serious exposure around presses, robotics cells, combustible dust, confined spaces, or crane picks. A larger plant can show a worse rate because it reports more consistently. Neither situation should be judged on the rate alone.

The biggest blind spot is severity. A company may celebrate a low TRC rate while accepting weak controls on low-frequency, high-severity work. Lockout tagout is the obvious example. A plant can run months with no recordable lockout case, then have one maintenance event that changes a worker's life. The BLS fatal event table shows why this matters. Contact with objects and equipment caused 121 manufacturing fatalities in 2023, the largest fatal event category for the sector.

Reporting culture is the second blind spot. A facility with honest near-miss reporting and conservative recordkeeping may look worse than a facility where supervisors quietly push employees toward first aid. That is not a reason to distrust the benchmark. It is a reason to pair the benchmark with leading indicators like corrective action closure time, safety observation quality, hazard removal, supervisor audits, training completion, and maintenance backlog.

How to Calculate Your Own Manufacturing Injury Rate

To calculate TRIR, multiply OSHA-recordable cases by 200,000, then divide by total hours worked. The 200,000 factor represents 100 full-time workers working 40 hours per week for 50 weeks. DART uses the same formula, but the numerator is only cases with days away, restricted duty, or transfer. BLS publishes industry rates in the same per-100-worker format, which is why this formula lets a small shop compare against the national benchmark.

Here is a simple example. If a plant had 7 recordable cases and 420,000 employee hours, its TRIR would be 3.33. If 4 of those cases involved days away, restriction, or transfer, its DART rate would be 1.90. Against the 2024 all-manufacturing benchmark of 2.7 TRC and 1.7 DART, that plant is worse than average on both frequency and severity. Against a food manufacturing peer group, the same 3.33 TRIR may be closer to the 3.3 TRC rate listed for food manufacturing. Context changes the conversation.

For multi-site operators, calculate rates the same way at every site before ranking plants. Do not mix temp labor, contractor hours, or overtime inconsistently. If one facility includes temp hours and another does not, your comparison is muddy before the first meeting starts. Keep the denominator clean, document the method, and use the same method every quarter.

How Different Manufacturing Operations Should Interpret the Data

A food processor should read this benchmark through sanitation, line speed, blades, conveyors, forklifts, ergonomic repetition, and wet-floor exposure. If the plant's rate is worse than the 3.3 TRC food manufacturing benchmark, the next step is not another generic safety meeting. It is a targeted review of line-side guarding, knife handling, washdown procedures, slip controls, staffing levels, and the injury pattern by department.

A fabricated metal operation should read the benchmark through high-energy work. The fatality table showed 59 fatal injuries in fabricated metal product manufacturing in 2023. The top fatal event listed for that sector was contact incidents. That points to machine guarding, lockout tagout, material handling, overhead lifting, hot work, and separation between pedestrians and powered industrial trucks.

A wood products plant should give extra attention to caught-in hazards, struck-by hazards, saws, dust, mobile equipment, and maintenance work. BLS reported 34 fatal injuries in wood product manufacturing in 2023, with contact incidents as the leading fatal event. That does not mean every wood plant is unsafe. It means leaders should treat guarding, dust controls, housekeeping, and lockout discipline as production-critical systems.

A lower-rate assembly or textile operation should not get complacent. Textile product mills showed a 2.1 TRC rate and 1.3 DART rate in 2024, below the manufacturing average. But lower frequency does not remove ergonomic, chemical, walking-working-surface, and machine-interface exposure. If the rate is low but near misses cluster around the same equipment or shift, treat that cluster as a warning.

Why This Data Is Link-Worthy for Manufacturers and Safety Teams

Safety professionals often need a neutral source to support budget requests. A supervisor can say a line is risky, but a CFO will ask how that risk compares to peers. This benchmark gives both sides a common reference point. It links each rate back to BLS, OSHA, NIOSH, NSC, or Liberty Mutual, so the numbers can be checked before they go into a slide deck, safety committee packet, board memo, insurance discussion, or annual EHS plan.

The data also helps marketers and suppliers avoid vague fear-based copy. If you sell guarding, ergonomics equipment, safety training, insurance, staffing, software, or maintenance services to manufacturers, use the real benchmark. A page that says "manufacturing is dangerous" is easy to ignore. A page that explains why contact with objects and equipment caused 121 fatal manufacturing injuries gives buyers something specific to act on.

That is the standard this resource is built for. The point is not to scare anyone. The point is to make the next safety conversation less fuzzy. When a plant knows its own rate, its NAICS peer rate, its fatal-risk exposure, and the cost of inaction, the improvement plan gets much easier to defend.

A strong benchmark page also saves people time. Instead of hunting through separate BLS tables, OSHA pages, NSC cost reports, and NIOSH dashboards, a safety manager can start here, click through to the original source, and decide which numbers belong in the next internal report. That is especially useful for small and mid-sized manufacturers that do not have a full EHS analytics team. They still need credible data when they ask for a safer forklift route, a guarding project, a lift-assist purchase, or a maintenance outage to fix known hazards.

The best use is practical, not academic. Print the peer rate, put your plant's rate beside it, and ask three questions. Where are we worse than peers? Which hazards could create a fatal event even if our rate looks fine? What can we change this quarter that removes exposure instead of just reminding workers to be careful? Those questions turn the benchmark into action. They also make it easier to show progress later, because leaders can see which hazards were removed, which rates moved, and which departments still need help.

FAQ

What is a good TRIR for manufacturing?

A good TRIR depends on the manufacturing industry. The all-manufacturing benchmark was 2.7 in 2024. A plant below its NAICS peer rate is generally performing better than average, but serious hazards still need separate review. The best goal is not just beating the national average. It is reducing repeat injuries, removing high-energy exposure, and proving that controls work across shifts, departments, and maintenance tasks.

What is the difference between TRC, TRIR, and DART?

TRC and TRIR both refer to total recordable cases normalized per 100 full-time workers. DART is narrower. It counts cases with days away from work, restriction, or transfer. BLS publishes both in its national industry rate table.

Which manufacturing industries have the highest injury rates?

In the latest BLS table used for this report, food and beverage categories show several of the highest listed rates. Beet sugar manufacturing was 6.8 TRC, soft drink manufacturing was 5.7 TRC, and seafood product preparation and packaging was 5.0 TRC.

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Cite This Report

Sources

Every statistic in this report is linked in context. Primary sources used:

1. BLS, Table 1. Incidence rates of nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses by industry and case types, 2024
2. BLS, Employer-Reported Workplace Injuries and Illnesses, 2023-2024
3. BLS, Fatal occupational injuries by industry and event or exposure, all United States, 2023
4. BLS, Fatal occupational injuries by industry and event or exposure, manufacturing, 2023
5. BLS, Manufacturing NAICS 31-33 industry at a glance
6. OSHA, Commonly Used Statistics
7. OSHA, Top 10 Most Frequently Cited Standards
8. National Safety Council, Work Injury Costs
9. NIOSH Worker Health Charts, BLS injuries and illnesses
10. Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index 2023