Workplace Injury Cost Calculator
The workers' comp claim is the visible part. Pick an injury type and your profit margin, and see the true cost — indirect costs included — plus the revenue your company has to generate just to earn it back.
Typical construction net margins run 2–7%.
Direct costs are national average workers' comp claim figures; indirect costs use the sliding ratio from OSHA's $afety Pays program. Your premiums, state, and claim severity will vary — planning estimate, not an actuarial quote.
Where the invisible money goes
Insurance covers the claim. Nobody covers the rest: the crew standing around the morning of the incident, the OSHA paperwork and possible inspection, hiring and training a replacement, overtime to hold the schedule, equipment damage, the experience-mod hit that raises your premiums for three years, and the superintendent's week that disappears into incident management. OSHA's $afety Pays research puts these indirect costs at 1.1× to 4.5× the direct claim — and unlike the claim, they come straight out of profit.
That's why the “revenue to break even” number is the one worth showing the owner: at a typical construction margin, a single fracture claim can take over $2 million in new work to pay back. And if the hazard behind it draws a citation, add the OSHA fine on top.
The cheapest incident is the one you spot first
Almost every one of these injuries starts as a visible hazard — a missing guardrail, an unprotected trench edge, a bad ladder setup. Site Safety AI turns any iPhone into a 30-second site scan that flags those hazards with a severity rating and a fix, so the money above stays theoretical.
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