The FastDOL Monthly

The second issue of The FastDOL Monthly, a recurring analysis of federal workplace enforcement data published the first week of every month. This issue draws on FastDOL's structured datasets, which now span full coverage across 20 data sources, 13 federal agencies, and the UVA Law Corporate Prosecution Registry. The Monthly's purpose is to surface what federal enforcement looks like, using data published by the Department of Labor and other agencies.

Issue 1 documented a sharp decline in federal OSHA enforcement beginning in October 2025. This issue asks a narrower question: when the federal retreat happens, where does the enforcement go? The answer is that it does not simply vanish. It moves out of proactive federal inspections and toward complaint-driven cases, and out of federal jurisdiction and into the state-run programs that federal OSHA does not control.

The enforcement didn't disappear — it relocated

Measured on the same April–September window cited in recent congressional scrutiny, federal OSHA inspections dropped from 18,557 to 16,044, a decline of 13.5 percent. But the states that run their own OSHA-approved programs moved in the opposite direction: state-plan inspections rose from roughly 20,800 to 21,900 over the same period, an increase of 5.3 percent. Taken together, total inspection activity across federal and state-plan jurisdictions fell only 3.6 percent.

The state-plan increase is broad-based, not the artifact of a single program. Among the largest state-plan states, California rose 19.5 percent, Tennessee 21.3 percent, Minnesota 24.7 percent, Maryland 19.2 percent, and Virginia 13.6 percent, while Washington and New York declined. The monthly series shows no step-change that would indicate a reporting gap opening or closing. Rather, the increase is distributed across most large state programs. The pattern is consistent across the data: federal enforcement contracted while the state plans, which operate under their own budgets and political conditions, did not follow.

What the federal retreat looks like up close

Within federal activity, the decline is not uniform across inspection types. The share of federal and state-plan inspections that are proactive (planned or programmed inspections initiated by the agency rather than triggered by an outside event) fell from 45.1 percent before October 2025 to 39.6 percent after. Over the same period, the reactive share (complaint-, referral-, and accident-driven inspections) rose from 43.6 percent to 45.9 percent.

This is the more consequential shift. Proactive inspections are how an agency finds hazards before they cause harm; reactive inspections respond after a complaint is filed or a worker is hurt. A move from proactive toward reactive enforcement means the agency is increasingly waiting for problems to surface rather than seeking them out.

By the numbers

Inspection figures describe the most recent fully ingested month (April 2026). Citation and penalty figures describe October 2025, the most recent month outside the provisional window created by the 4–6 month citation lag, and the inflection month identified in Issue 1.

When the penalty is the maximum the law allows

The largest OSHA penalties issued in the most recent month cluster at identical values — several at exactly $165,514, others at $99,300. These are not arbitrary figures. $165,514 is OSHA's 2024 statutory maximum for a single willful or repeat violation after inflation adjustment; the agency cannot legally assess more for one citation. When headline penalties land precisely at the ceiling, it means OSHA is maxing out the available penalty for the most serious cases — the limit is statutory, not discretionary.

What happens after the headline

A maximum penalty at issuance is not what an employer ultimately pays. OSHA penalties are frequently reduced through the contest and settlement process, and the largest initial penalties tend to take the biggest reductions. Among the highest-proposed willful and serious penalties of the past twelve months, the range of outcomes is wide: some are paid in full, while others are cut sharply or eliminated entirely. One $165,514 willful citation against a Florida restoration contractor was reduced to zero after contest; a $165,514 serious citation against an Ohio environmental-services firm was cut by 90 percent to $16,550; a Massachusetts food producer's $165,514 citation settled at $125,000.

The pattern matters because the proposed penalty is the number that makes headlines, while the settled figure, often months later, frequently far lower, is what the enforcement actually amounts to. A single inspection can also generate many separate maximum citations: a New Jersey produce facility drew six willful citations at the statutory ceiling from one November inspection, a combined proposed total approaching a million dollars before any of the contest-stage adjustments that typically follow.