OSHA publishes real, specific maximum civil penalty amounts every year, adjusted for inflation under federal law unless that adjustment can’t be made. For 2026, the numbers are published directly by OSHA itself — not an estimate, not a third-party aggregation.
| Violation type | 2026 maximum |
|---|---|
| Serious / Other-than-Serious | $16,550 per violation |
| Failure to Abate | $16,550 per day past the abatement deadline |
| Willful or Repeat | $165,514 per violation (real floor: $11,823 for Willful, no discretionary reduction below it) |
Why the numbers didn’t change from 2025
Federal law requires OSHA to adjust its civil penalty maximums annually for inflation, using a formula tied to the Consumer Price Index. For 2026, that adjustment could not be made, so OSHA is carrying forward the same maximum penalty levels that applied in 2025 rather than a real increase — confirmed directly in OSHA’s own May 2026 memo on the 2026 annual adjustment.
Small-business penalty reductions reach further now
OSHA’s penalty structure includes real, published reductions tied to employer size, and those reductions have recently expanded. Employers with 11 to 25 employees can now qualify for a 70% penalty reduction. The steepest reduction, 80%, previously reserved for the very smallest employers, now extends to employers with 20 or fewer employees on Serious and Willful violations. These are real discretionary reductions OSHA applies during the citation process, not automatic — they don’t apply to every case, and Willful violations still can’t drop below the real $11,823 floor regardless of size.
Statutory maximum vs. real average penalty issued
Real average initial penalties, 2023–present: Lockout/Tagout $11,269 · Fall Protection $7,356 · Forklift Operations $6,486 · Respiratory Protection $5,113. Statutory maximums are ceilings, not expectations — but the real averages aren’t trivial either.
It matters to keep two real numbers separate. The maximums in the table above are the ceiling OSHA is legally permitted to assess per violation — not what a typical cited employer actually pays. The real average penalty per citation, by standard, is a different and generally much lower number, and it varies widely depending on which 29 CFR standard was cited. See the real, sourced average penalty per standard at the OSHA Fine & Penalty Lookup tool, or the full ranked breakdown at /risk-index — both are built from actual DOL citation records, not the statutory maximum.