US mining safety statistics
US mining operations have recorded 3,120 miner fatalities and 3,099,913 MSHA safety violations across 92,004 mines on file since 1983, carrying $1.8 billion in proposed federal penalties.
Live figures from the full US Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) record, refreshed weekly. Every number links to the underlying records.
The national record at a glance
- Mines on file
- 92,004
- 6,606 currently active
- Reportable incidents
- 740,516
- Accidents on record since 1983
- Miner fatalities
- 3,120
- Reportable deaths on file
- Safety violations
- 3,099,913
- MSHA citations since 1994
- Proposed penalties
- $1.8 billion
- Federal civil penalties assessed
- Employment hours
- 12.9 billion
- Reported miner-hours worked
The employment-hours figure is what sets this dataset apart. Reported miner-hours from 36,014 mines make it possible to compute a real safety rate (citations and injuries per million hours worked) for a mine or operator, rather than a raw count that just tracks size. Those rates appear on every mine and operator page.
Break the numbers down
- Operators and controllers ranked by recorded fatalities
- Operators by MSHA citations with proposed and paid penalty totals
- Every US state ranked by mining fatalities, with per-state feeds
- Accident classifications (roof fall, powered haulage, electrical, and the rest)
- Fatalities by year with the coal vs metal split and the current year's running count
- Inspections by year with inspection hours, mines inspected and violations per 100 inspection hours
- Year-over-year trends and decade comparisons
How to read these numbers
Counts reflect what operators reported to MSHA and what MSHA published; they are not a danger score. A high violation count often just means a large operation with many inspections, and zero violations does not mean a mine is safe. Violations and proposed penalties begin in 1994, when MSHA's electronic enforcement record starts; accident records reach back to January 1983. Where a rate has no employment-hours denominator on file, the record says so rather than implying one.
Source data
Primary source: MSHA Open Government Data. Mining Incidents adds no information MSHA has not published. For citation formats see /citing; for the reporter background kit see /press.