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Safety engineers

Official title Health and Safety Engineers, Except Mining Safety Engineers and Inspectors (SOC 17-2111)

Also called Health and safety engineer, EHS engineer, Industrial safety engineer, Occupational safety engineer, Process safety engineer

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 21,450 US safety engineers, with median pay of $115,160 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2003, the highest was 29,920, in May 2003. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 2,000 from 1940, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for safety engineers: EHS management software platforms, 1996 to 2020.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 5.4% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

  • 52% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023
  • 0.028 estimated probability that the whole occupation could be computerised, over an unspecified number of years. Not a forecast of job losses. Frey and Osborne, 2013

Since the 2013 prediction

In 2013, Frey and Osborne put this job's probability of computerisation at 0.028. BLS counted 23,850 of these jobs in May 2013 and 21,450 in May 2025 (-10%, a change derived by Future History).

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.

Last updated .

Cite this page
APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Safety engineers: jobs and pay since 1940 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/17-2111

Chicago

Future History. "Safety engineers: jobs and pay since 1940." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/17-2111.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_17_2111, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Safety engineers: jobs and pay since 1940}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/17-2111}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time
19001925195019752000now
2026
Known then as Factory Inspector / Safety Inspector (state agency and insurance roles)
Known then as Safety Engineer / Industrial Safety Engineer (pre-OSHA era)
Known then as Safety Engineer / Industrial Hygienist (OSHA compliance era)
Known then as EHS Engineer / Process Safety Engineer (post-Bhopal, PSM era)
Known then as Health and Safety Engineers, Except Mining Safety Engineers and Inspectors (BLS SOC 17-2111)
Known today as Health and Safety Engineers, Except Mining Safety Engineers and Inspectors (BLS SOC 17-2111)
Projected to still be called Health and Safety Engineers, Except Mining Safety Engineers and Inspectors (BLS SOC 17-2111)
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
21K
Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$115,160

≈ $112,208 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1877

Massachusetts passes the nation's first factory safety law, requiring guards on belts, shafts, and gears and mandating adequate fire exits. Nine states had implemented regular factory inspections by 1890. The law created the first professional role with safety engineering responsibilities: the state factory inspector. These were not engineers by training, but their work of identifying mechanical hazards, measuring fire clearances, and enforcing protective guarding is the direct predecessor of 20th-century safety engineering practice.

Beat · 1911

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25, 1911 killed 146 workers and catalyzed the modern safety engineering profession. Within months, the Factory Investigating Commission was created in New York and the United Society of Casualty Inspectors was founded (October 14, 1911) with 62 members. The organization renamed itself the American Society of Safety Engineers in 1914. The fire is the founding event of American industrial safety as an organized profession.

Beat · 1913

The National Safety Council is founded by companies seeking to pool information about accident prevention. The NSC's formation represents the first systematic attempt by US industry to treat workplace safety as a shared knowledge problem rather than a proprietary competitive matter. The NSC's incident rate tracking and industry benchmarking data became a foundational tool for safety engineers throughout the 20th century.

Beat · 1969

The Board of Certified Safety Professionals (BCSP) is incorporated in Illinois as a peer-operated certification body. The Certified Safety Professional (CSP) becomes the profession's primary credential, eventually commanding a documented $30,000+ annual salary premium over uncertified practitioners and being required by major employers including Amazon, ExxonMobil, and Lockheed Martin. BCSP has awarded more than 100,000 credentials since its founding, tracking the growth of the credentialed safety professional workforce.

Beat · 1970

President Nixon signs the Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act on December 29, 1970. OSHA opens its doors in April 1971. In the two years before OSHA, 14,000 workers died from workplace hazards annually. The OSH Act created federal authority to set and enforce workplace safety standards, transforming safety engineering from a voluntary corporate best practice into a legal requirement. ASSE membership crossed 10,000 in 1971, the immediate post-OSHA year, as employers across industries hired safety professionals.

Beat · 1984

The Bhopal disaster (December 2-3, 1984) kills more than 3,000 people when a Union Carbide pesticide plant in India releases methyl isocyanate gas over a densely populated area. The disaster is the worst industrial accident in history. Within three months, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers responds by establishing the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS, March 1985) and developing the systematic HAZOP (Hazard and Operability) methodology for analyzing chemical process risks. OSHA enacts the Process Safety Management standard in 1992, creating a new mandatory specialty: the process safety engineer.

Beat · 1992

OSHA enacts 29 CFR 1910.119, Process Safety Management of Highly Hazardous Chemicals, mandated by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 in the wake of Bhopal. PSM requires employers with covered quantities of hazardous chemicals to conduct formal Process Hazard Analyses (PHAs), HAZOP studies, and management of change procedures on five-year revalidation cycles. The rule creates sustained engineering demand: every covered facility must retain or contract engineers capable of facilitating and documenting PHAs at the required level of rigor.

Beat · 2018

The American Society of Safety Engineers renames itself the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) in 2018, reflecting the breadth of the profession beyond purely engineering roles. The organization's membership had grown from 62 founders in 1911 to more than 36,000 members in 75 countries by the time of the rename. The name change also reflects the increasing proportion of practitioners who reach safety roles through non-engineering pathways, though the 17-2111 SOC code retains "engineer" in its title.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace safety engineers? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say
Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
→ 2035
+5.4%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 17-2111 (Health and safety engineers, except mining safety engineers and inspectors): 22.3 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 23.5 thousand in 2035, a change of +1.2 thousand (+5.4%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (0.3% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error
How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)
Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
52%
of tasks
What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 17-2111.00 Health and Safety Engineers, Except Mining Safety Engineers and Inspectors. Shown: human-rated β = 0.52, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.4 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.64; GPT-4-rated β 0.47. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error
Frey & Osborne (2013), "The Future of Employment"
2013 study · Probability of computerisation (2013 model)
2.8%
probability
What this measures

Published appendix value for SOC 2010 17-2111 Health and Safety Engineers, Except Mining Safety Engineers and Inspectors: probability of computerisation 0.028, rank 103 of 702 (rank 1 is least computerisable). Frey and Osborne estimated in 2013, with a Gaussian-process classifier on O*NET variables, how likely the whole occupation is to be technically automatable over "some unspecified number of years, perhaps a decade or two". It is a probability for the occupation, not a share of tasks and not a forecast of jobs lost.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for safety engineers

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereManage chemical hazard communication and Safety Data Sheet (SDS) libraries using VelocityEHS SDS Management (ML-powered): maintain the facility SDS library for all chemicals on-site using VelocityEHS's Accelerate Platform, which continuously ingests 20,000+ new or updated SDSs weekly

Manage chemical hazard communication and Safety Data Sheet (SDS) libraries using VelocityEHS SDS Management (ML-powered): maintain the facility SDS library for all chemicals on-site using VelocityEHS's Accelerate Platform, which continuously ingests 20,000+ new or updated SDSs weekly; use AI-powered SDS indexing (96-99% field-extraction precision per VelocityEHS's Elsevier-published 2025 research) to auto-populate chemical inventory, exposure limits, PPE requirements, and emergency response information; generate Right-to-Know binders and GHS-compliant container labels; and review AI-extracted chemical hazard data for accuracy before use in JSAs and emergency response planning.[13],[15]

Where your edge is

AI SDS extraction achieves 96–99% field precision on standard GHS-format documents, but extraction errors are disproportionately likely on older non-GHS SDSs, proprietary mixture formulations, or chemical documents in non-English languages. For any chemical with significant respiratory, dermal, or carcinogenic exposure potential, personally verify the AI-extracted PELs, TLVs, and required PPE against the source SDS before incorporating into a JSA or training material: an AI extraction error on a permissible exposure limit is a OSHA recordkeeping violation and a worker safety failure.

AI is sitting alongside you hereConduct and manage ergonomic risk assessments using TuMeke Ergonomics AI: capture short video clips of workers performing manual materials handling, overhead reaching, or repetitive motion tasks on a smartphone

Conduct and manage ergonomic risk assessments using TuMeke Ergonomics AI: capture short video clips of workers performing manual materials handling, overhead reaching, or repetitive motion tasks on a smartphone; TuMeke's computer vision automatically generates a posture risk score using REBA/RULA methodology and produces task-specific AI recommendations for workstation modification; review AI-generated findings, validate against direct observation, prioritize interventions by risk score and task frequency, and track musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) incident rates before and after controls are implemented. TuMeke claims assessments complete 20x faster than traditional manual methods and organizations achieve up to 68% injury reduction.[11],[1]

Tools picking this up
Where your edge is

TuMeke's AI scores posture risk from video with high accuracy for standardized tasks, but ergonomic intervention effectiveness depends on factors the camera cannot observe: worker fatigue patterns across a full shift, informal task sequencing that differs from the observed clip, or the feasibility of recommended workstation changes given production constraints. Always conduct a full shift observation for high-frequency tasks before finalizing controls, and re-assess after implementation to confirm the AI-projected risk reduction is realized in actual MSD claim data.

AI is sitting alongside you hereCreate and maintain Job Safety Analyses (JSAs) using VelocityEHS Velo AI Hazard Analyzer and AI Control Recommendations: enter job step descriptions into the Accelerate Platform

Create and maintain Job Safety Analyses (JSAs) using VelocityEHS Velo AI Hazard Analyzer and AI Control Recommendations: enter job step descriptions into the Accelerate Platform; Velo automatically scans each step for overlooked hazards, scores description quality (flagging under-specified conditions like "climb ladder" vs. "climb 20-foot extension ladder with 75-lb load"), and suggests tailored controls drawn from the organization's hazard library plus OSHA regulatory data; review AI-generated hazard-control pairs, accept or revise against site-specific conditions, and publish standardized JSAs for contractor and frontline worker orientation. Features launched October 2025.[7],[16]

Where your edge is

Velo's hazard library and regulatory data are trained on general industry patterns: novel processes, proprietary chemicals, or unusual task configurations unique to your facility will produce generic or incomplete hazard suggestions. For any new operation involving chemicals, confined spaces, high-energy control, or hot work, supplement AI-generated JSA drafts with a structured hazard identification session involving the frontline workers who perform the task. Worker participation in JSA development is both an OSHA best practice and the single best source of tacit hazard knowledge that no AI system captures.

Where safety engineers go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Architectural and Engineering Managers

Senior Health and Safety Engineers who build program management, budget ownership, and cross-functional leadership experience are the natural pipeline into EHS Director or Engineering Manager roles. This transition is especially timely as organizations deploying computer-vision safety AI (Voxel, Intenseye), wearable monitoring platforms (MākuSafe), and enterprise EHS suites (Cority, Intelex) need leaders who can govern AI tool adoption, defining which platforms to invest in, setting human-in-the-loop review standards for AI safety alerts, and building organizational capability to use AI outputs defensibly in OSHA inspections and litigation. Engineering Managers in EHS retain licensed professional credibility while operating at a scope (enterprise safety budget, capital allocation for engineering controls, board-level ESG reporting) where AI displacement is minimal. BLS projects sustained demand for engineering managers tied to manufacturing investment and safety regulation enforcement through 2034.

What you'd add
  • · EHS program budgeting and capital planning: building ROI cases for safety controls, AI platform investments, and occupational health programs
  • · AI governance for EHS: building alert triage protocols, false-positive management standards, and OSHA-defensible documentation requirements for AI-flagged incidents
  • · People management: hiring and developing safety professionals, managing contractor EHS programs, building safety culture across multi-site organizations
  • · ESG reporting fundamentals: TCFD climate risk, GRI safety disclosures, SEC ESG rule implications for occupational safety data
  • · Executive communication: translating lagging indicator (injury rates, OSHA citations) and leading indicator (computer-vision alert trends, near-miss rates) data into board-level risk narratives
What it takesSome new skills to pick up
Tools of the era

How has the work of safety engineers changed since 1877?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Visual inspection and physical guarding (factory inspector era)

    The first safety practitioners worked entirely through observation and physical intervention: walking factory floors, identifying exposed belts and gears, measuring fire-exit clearances, and writing violation notices. Their tools were clipboards, measuring tapes, and the legal authority conferred by state factory inspection acts. The guarding of moving machinery parts (shafts, belts, gears, saw blades) was the dominant safety engineering intervention of the era: a physical engineering solution requiring no instrumentation.

    Effect on the work

    Factory inspection created the profession but did not immediately professionalize it. State factory inspectors were political appointees in many states, not engineers; the engineering dimension grew as machines became more complex and the interplay between mechanical hazards and worker injury became better understood.

  • Incident-rate tracking and workers' compensation data systems (NSC era)

    The founding of the National Safety Council in 1913 introduced systematic injury data collection as a safety engineering tool. Companies began tracking accident rates by department, shift, and job type, giving safety engineers quantitative baselines against which to measure the effect of guarding, procedure changes, and training. Workers' compensation laws (first in New York, 1910; in many states by 1921) gave employers a financial incentive to invest in safety, and the actuarial data from workers' comp insurers became a second data stream for identifying hazard patterns. This era established the 'safety by the numbers' culture that persists today.

    Effect on the work

    Workers' compensation laws were the primary driver of corporate safety program expansion in the 1910s-1940s. By giving employers financial liability for workplace injuries, the laws transformed safety from a moral argument into a cost-accounting argument.

  • Industrial hygiene instrumentation + OSHA compliance documentation (post-OSH Act era)

    The OSH Act of 1970 changed the profession structurally. OSHA promulgated specific standards for chemical exposures (permissible exposure limits, PELs), noise dosimetry, respiratory protection, and lockout/tagout. This required safety engineers to deploy calibrated instrumentation: personal air sampling pumps for breathing-zone chemical measurements, noise dosimeters for hearing conservation programs, direct-reading photoionization detectors for confined space entry. Written programs became legally required: hazard communication programs, OSHA 300/301 recordkeeping logs, emergency action plans. The combination of instrumentation and documentation was the technological core of the post-1970 profession.

    Effect on the work

    OSHA compliance demand was the largest employment shock the profession ever experienced. ASSE membership grew between 1971 and 1979 as employers across industries hired safety professionals to achieve compliance. Workplace fatalities fell 60% between 1970 and the 2010s, a statistic OSHA cites as the program's primary outcome measure.

  • Process safety engineering and HAZOP methodology (post-Bhopal, PSM era)

    The Bhopal disaster of December 1984 killed thousands of people and injured hundreds of thousands when a Union Carbide pesticide plant in India released methyl isocyanate gas. Within months, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers established the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS, March 1985) to develop and codify process hazard analysis (PHA) methodology. OSHA enacted the Process Safety Management standard (29 CFR 1910.119) in 1992, requiring employers with large quantities of highly hazardous chemicals to conduct formal PHAs and HAZOPs. Process safety engineering became a distinct specialty within the broader health and safety engineering profession, requiring chemical and mechanical engineering expertise alongside safety credentials.

    Effect on the work

    PSM compliance created demand for engineers with combined chemical process and safety expertise at refineries, chemical plants, and manufacturing facilities. The CCPS developed the HAZOP (Hazard and Operability) study methodology and PHA-Pro software tools that became the standard documentation framework. Process safety engineers today command among the highest wages in the profession, concentrated in oil and gas, petrochemicals, and specialty chemicals.

  • EHS management software platforms (Cority, Intelex, VelocityEHS, web era)

    The late 1990s and 2000s brought integrated software platforms for EHS program management: Cority (originally Medgate, founded 1999), Intelex Technologies (founded 1992), and VelocityEHS (founded 1996 as MSDSonline) brought OSHA 300 recordkeeping, incident management, chemical inventory, and training tracking into centralized databases. For safety engineers, the shift from paper binders and spreadsheets to purpose-built EHS platforms multiplied the volume of hazards they could track and the speed at which they could identify trends. The platforms also produced audit trails that strengthened the professional's position in OSHA inspections and litigation.

  • AI-powered safety monitoring and augmentation (computer vision, wearable AI, generative AI)

    The 2020s brought a wave of AI tools that are reshaping how safety engineers work, without displacing the profession. Wearable AI sensors (MākuSafe, 2020) monitor individual worker noise exposure, heat index, and strain events in real time. Generative AI platforms (Cority Cortex AI, December 2025; VelocityEHS Velo, October 2025; Intelex Input AI, Q3 2025) automate incident form entry, JSA drafting, SDS extraction, and permit analysis. A 2025 VelocityEHS survey of more than a hundred EHS professionals found 0% feared job loss from AI, with the consensus being that AI multiplies the scale of what a single engineer can monitor and document, but leaves the physical-world judgment and regulatory accountability entirely with the human practitioner.

    Effect on the work

    The ASSP released a white paper in February 2026 concluding that AI adoption in EHS is "still early" and that human expertise remains essential for validating AI outputs.

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Health and Safety Engineers, Except Mining Safety Engineers and Inspectors employment and pay by year

On record since1877
Latest US employment21,450 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$115,160 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook+5.4% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error
View all 26 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
19402,000n/aEst., EHS Today Researched contextReport
197110,000n/aEst., EHS Today Researched contextReport
199828,000n/aEst., IOM / NCBI Bookshelf Researched contextReport
200329,920$59,650BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statisticReport
200425,860$63,730BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statisticReport
200525,330$65,210BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statisticReport
200624,620$66,290BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statisticReport
200724,770$69,580BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statisticReport
200825,190$72,490BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statisticReport
200924,070$74,080BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statisticReport
201023,390$75,430BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statisticReport
201123,170$75,470BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statisticReport
201223,490$76,830BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statisticReport
201323,850$78,820BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statisticReport
201424,530$81,830BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statisticReport
201524,900$84,600BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statisticReport
201625,410$86,720BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statisticReport
201726,130$88,510BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statisticReport
201826,230$89,130BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statisticReport
201925,860$91,410BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statisticReport
202023,780$94,240BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
202122,870$99,040BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
202221,520$100,660BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
202322,510$103,690BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statisticReport
202423,220$109,660BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statisticReport
202521,450$115,160BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
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