Trump’s Workplace Safety Chief Calls New Inspectors Top Priority

The head of the nation’s top workplace safety regulator wants to start filling 180 vacant safety inspector positions as part of a sweeping effort to balance enforcement with industry cooperation.

“Workplace safety is a national health crisis, and we need to approach it like that,” David Keeling, who became the head of the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said during an exclusive sit-down interview with Bloomberg Law.

The agency lost more than 180 federal safety inspectors from fiscal year September 2024 to September 2025, according to the agency’s own data. Attrition as well as a hiring freeze put into place in January 2023 under the Biden administration contributed to a decline in staffing numbers.

OSHA has currently one inspector for every 84,000 US workers.

“We’re going to be looking for the right people in the right spots, and we’ll be looking at actively hiring,” he added.

An OSHA spokesperson said Keeling is working to restart hiring of new inspectors despite the ongoing freeze.

The drop in safety inspectors has the potential to hamper the agency’s ability to conduct more targeted inspections of high hazard industries like manufacturing, warehousing, and construction this year, potentially erasing OSHA’s recent progress in reducing workplace injuries and illnesses.

That raised concerns from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who pressed OSHA in a letter recently to respond to new data that reveals the agency performed fewer inspections and issued fewer fines for severe workplace violations in 2025.

OSHA carried out 17,170 programmed inspections in fiscal year 2024, according to the latest OSHA inspection data available. That’s an 8% increase from the year before, and puts the number of planned inspections on par with ones responding to employee complaints, called unprogrammed inspections.

“You’re not going to see me measure our success by the number of inspections we do or citations we do—that doesn’t equal success to me,” Keeling said. “Preventing injuries, preventing illnesses is my only measure of success.”

Modernization v. Deregulation

President Donald Trump has pushed to slash regulations at federal agencies like OSHA.

As a result, Keeling plans to focus OSHA’s efforts on modernization, looking at ways in which the agency can streamline its operations and update its rules. Keeling said he will look to streamline safety standards by repealing outdated or redundant rules while at the same time looking at more modern compliance strategies across industries.

The agency will be involved in ongoing conversations with industry groups when it comes to predictive analytics and how to harness data to make the agency better, Keeling noted.

“We don’t do enough in the space of predictive analytics, we all know the BLS data is great, but there’s very much a limitation on what the BLS data provides us,” he said, referring to the annual report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that looks at non-fatal and fatal workplace injuries and illnesses in the workplace. “We need to look at things that are more forward looking and more preventive.”

OSHA will carry out its duties as an enforcement agency, but also find ways to cooperate with small to medium-size businesses to educate them on the best workplace safety practices, he said. OSHA offers several cooperative programs where companies can work with the agency to prevent injuries in the workplace.

For example, the Voluntary Protection Program allows companies to undertake an on-site evaluation in order to be exempted from inspections by the agency, and the Safety Champions Program—launching at the end of February—will assist employers in developing effective safety programs.

“It’s a more modern approach, and encourages risk assessment, risk analysis, and risk reduction, not necessarily compliance,” said Keeling.

This shift follows similar efforts happening in state OSH plans, where more responsibility for flagging potential hazards falls onto employers.

Nevada, for example, requires some employers to perform a one-time job hazard analysis of working conditions that could cause heat illness in order to tailor a written safety program for their workplace. Washington is also seeking to require construction companies to perform hazard assessments for excavation and trenching at their worksites.

Improving Targeting of Engineered Stone

While OSHA has a federal standard for silica, the agency faces significant challenges in holding engineered stone fabrication shops accountable.

An uptick in cases of the lung disease silicosis from engineered stone has shined a new spotlight on what should be done to protect workers.

California, where the silicosis epidemic is centered in the US, has identified 432 cases of confirmed silicosis associated with engineered stone as of last November, with at least 25 deaths and 48 lung transplants.

Keeling wants to engage with state plans in improving targeting methods for the fabrication shops where most of the cutting of the stone is taking place.

Engineered stone fabrication shops don’t have their own industry classification code, but instead are part of a larger one that includes natural stone.

“How do we get to those smaller mom and pop type shops, one, two, three employee type shops—it may or may not be covered under the standard necessarily because of the number of employees they have,” said Keeling. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t do some work there.”

Engineered stone is a man-made mixture of finely-ground rock bound together by resin. For countertops and tabletops, the rock is often quartz. Pigments may be added to the resin for color.

The material has a higher silica content than quarried stone such as granite, creating additional health complications. When a worker cuts or grinds engineered stone, the dust produced could be 80% or more toxic silica dust, while for quarried stone slabs the silica content is only up to 30%.

The long latency period before symptoms develop adds to the need for coordinated efforts among employers, regulatory agencies and health care providers to combat the emerging occupational health hazard, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which confirmed its first case of silicosis last month.