What Is LTIR? Lost Time Incident Rate Explained

Working in highly regulated industries like construction, renewable energy, aviation, utilities and transportation, you’ll get asked for your lost time numbers sooner or later.

This guide is for safety managers, operations leads and inspection teams who need to get the number right. You’ll find the LTIR formula with worked examples, the OSHA rules for what counts as a lost time injury and how to count the days, how LTIR differs from LTIFR, DART and severity rate, and how inspection findings and corrective actions prevent the injuries that end up in the rate.

What Is LTIR (Lost Time Incident Rate)?

LTIR (Lost Time Incident Rate) is the number of work-related injuries and illnesses that keep an employee away from work for at least one full day after the day of the incident, per 200,000 hours worked. The 200,000 base equals 100 full-time employees working a year, so LTIR reads as lost-time cases per 100 workers.

You’ll also see it called the lost time injury rate or lost time case rate. Two clarifications save a lot of confusion:

• OSHA doesn’t define “LTIR”. OSHA requires you to record cases involving days away from work on the OSHA 300 Log under 29 CFR 1904.7. LTIR is a rate you calculate from that log.
• The official US equivalent comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. BLS publishes the incidence rate of “cases with days away from work” (DAFW) by industry, and that’s the benchmark to compare your LTIR against.

LTIR measures frequency only. It doesn’t tell you whether a case cost 2 days or 120 days. Severity has its own rate, covered below.

LTIR Formula and Worked Examples

LTIR = (Number of lost-time cases × 200,000) ÷ Total hours worked

The 200,000 comes from 100 employees × 40 hours × 50 weeks. It converts your result into a rate per 100 full-time workers, so a 60-person contractor and a 6,000-person utility can be compared on the same scale. For total hours, use hours actually worked, including overtime and supervised temporary staff, and leave out vacation, sick leave and holidays.

Worked example. A wind O&M contractor logs 3 lost-time cases in a year across 420,000 hours worked:

• LTIR = (3 × 200,000) ÷ 420,000 = 1.43 lost-time cases per 100 workers
• The same data on a 1,000,000-hour base (LTIFR) = (3 × 1,000,000) ÷ 420,000 = 7.14

Nothing changed except the multiplier. LTIFR is always five times LTIR for the same data. That’s why you should check the base before you compare a US site with a UK, Australian or offshore wind site.

Small-company example. A 40-person electrical crew works about 80,000 hours a year. With zero lost-time cases its LTIR is 0. With one ankle fracture from a fall off a ladder it becomes (1 × 200,000) ÷ 80,000 = 2.5, roughly three times the 2024 US private-industry rate for days-away cases. One incident moves the number that much. For small teams, look at three-year rolling LTIR and at leading indicators before drawing conclusions from a single year.

Severity example. Those 3 cases at the wind contractor cost 12, 31 and 9 calendar days away (52 in total). The lost time severity rate is (52 × 200,000) ÷ 420,000 = 24.8 days lost per 100 workers, or about 17 days per case. For context, BLS reports a median of 8 days away from work for US private-industry cases over 2023–2024, so this contractor’s cases run longer than typical.

Related: The 7 best health and safety management software in 2026, tested by our team

What Counts as a Lost Time Injury

A lost time injury (LTI) is a work-related injury or illness that keeps the employee from working for at least one full day after the day it happened. Most disputes about LTIR come down to counting, and OSHA’s day-counting rules under 1904.7(b)(3) settle them:

• The day of the injury doesn’t count. You start counting on the day after the injury or illness began. A worker who goes home early on the day of the injury and returns the next morning is not a lost-time case.
• Count calendar days, not workdays. Weekends, holidays and days off count if the employee couldn’t have worked them, whether or not they were scheduled to.
• Follow the doctor, not the employee. If a physician or licensed health care professional says the worker should stay home and they come in anyway, it’s still a days-away case. If they stay home longer than recommended, stop counting on the date the clinician said they could return.
• You may cap the count at 180 days. Once a case passes 180 calendar days away from work and/or restricted, entering 180 is adequate.
• Record the case once, in the year it happened. If the absence runs into the next year, the days still go on the original year’s log. Estimate the days if the case is still open when you prepare the annual summary, then update the entry later.
• Restricted duty is not lost time. A worker who comes back on light duties or a job transfer is a restricted case. It counts toward DART and TRIR, but not toward LTIR.
• Fatalities depend on the framework. OSHA records a death in its own column, separate from days-away cases. IOGP and G+ count fatalities inside their lost time injury rates. State which convention you use when you report.

If your team works in the UK, note that HSE’s RIDDOR uses a different threshold. An injury becomes reportable when a worker can’t do their normal duties for more than 7 consecutive days, not counting the day of the accident but including weekends and rest days, and it must be reported within 15 days of the accident. Under RIDDOR, light duties still count as incapacity, which is the opposite of OSHA’s treatment of restricted work for LTIR.

For the paperwork side, see how the OSHA 300 Log works, and capture the facts while they’re fresh with an incident report template. Day counts are only as good as the return-to-work dates someone writes down.

LTIR vs LTIFR, DART, TRIR and Severity Rate

Three comparisons cause most of the confusion around lost time numbers.

LTIR vs LTIFR: same injuries, different base. LTIR counts lost-time cases per 200,000 hours, the US convention. LTIFR counts them per 1,000,000 hours, used in the UK, Australia, the EU, offshore wind (G+), and oil and gas (IOGP). For the same data, LTIFR is always five times LTIR. Watch the acronym too: IOGP calls its metric “lost time injury rate (LTIR)” but calculates it per million hours, so its 2024 rate of 0.24 is about 0.05 on a US base. Always print the base next to the figure.

LTIR vs DART: where restricted duty goes. DART counts days away, restricted work, and job transfer cases. LTIR counts only days away. That makes DART always equal to or higher than LTIR, and the gap between them shows how many injured workers you’re keeping on light duty. A large gap isn’t automatically a problem, but it’s the first place to look if LTIR seems too good (see below).

LTIR vs lost time severity rate: how often vs. how long. LTIR tells you how many lost-time cases you had. The severity rate (total days lost × 200,000 ÷ hours worked) tells you how long they lasted. Two sites with the same LTIR can have very different severity: one with three sprains, the other with three fractures.

For how all of these sit alongside TRIR, DART, and EMR in one view, see the comparison table in our guide to the total recordable incident rate (TRIR).

Related: 6 best SafetyCulture alternatives for inspection teams

What Is a Good LTIR?

A good LTIR is one below your industry’s rate for days-away cases and trending down over several years. Use these benchmarks (final data unless marked otherwise):

• US private industry, 2024 (BLS, final, released January 22, 2026): 888,100 cases with days away from work, a rate of 0.8 per 100 full-time workers. The total recordable rate was 2.3.
• Construction, 2024 (BLS): 0.9 days-away cases per 100 workers. The DART rate was 1.3.
• Trade, transportation and utilities, 2024 (BLS): 1.3 days-away cases per 100 workers. The DART rate was 2.2.
• Offshore wind, 2024 (G+ Global Offshore Wind Health and Safety Organisation): LTIF of 1.27 per million hours, up 19% from 1.07 in 2023, across a record 79 million hours. That’s roughly 0.25 on a 200,000 base. G+’s 2025 report says LTIF then fell by 8%, with 93 lost work day injuries over 69.2 million hours.
• Oil and gas upstream, 2024 (IOGP): lost time injury rate of 0.24 per million hours across 4,159 million work hours, unchanged from 2023.

For your exact NAICS code, use the BLS industry table, and compare yourself against the most detailed industry line, not the sector average. BLS plans to publish 2025 data on November 18, 2026. Until then, treat any “2025 national LTIR” you see quoted as an estimate.

Why a Low LTIR Can Hide Risk

LTIR has a built-in loophole: the same injury counts or doesn’t count depending on whether the worker is sent home or kept on site. Bring an injured worker back on modified duty the next morning, and a lost-time case becomes a restricted case. LTIR improves. The injury is identical.

Modified duty is often the right medical and human call. Krause, Dasinger and Neuhauser reviewed 29 studies in the Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation (1998) and found that injured workers offered modified work return to work about twice as often as those who aren’t, and that modified work programs cut lost work days in half.

The problem starts when it’s used to manage the number. Lenore Azaroff, Charles Levenstein and David Wegman of UMass Lowell (American Journal of Public Health, 2002) listed this exact mechanism among the “filters” that make injury statistics unreliable: “employers can avoid lost time by providing light duty. Thus, injuries resulting in lost time may not represent underlying patterns.” Safety incentive programs that reward low injury counts can push in the same direction.

The US GAO (report GAO-12-329, 2012) noted that experts suggest rate-based programs “may discourage reporting.” GAO estimated that 22% of US manufacturers ran such programs in 2010, although the two studies it reviewed found no measurable link to reporting. In one study Azaroff and colleagues cite, 30% of 98 workers had lost time or work restrictions, yet fewer than 5% had officially reported a work-related health problem.

Three checks tell you whether your LTIR is real:

1. Compare LTIR with DART. BLS data for 2023–2024 shows days-away cases made up 61.5% of all DART cases nationally, and job transfer or restriction cases made up 38.5%. If restricted cases make up most of your DART and your LTIR is near zero, ask why.
2. Check how fast people return. A pattern of “back on light duty the next day” after fractures and sprains is a red flag, not a success.
3. Look upstream. Near-miss reports and inspection findings should show the hazards behind your injuries. A falling LTIR alongside falling near-miss reporting usually means people stopped reporting, not that work got safer.

How Inspections and Corrective Actions Prevent Lost-Time Injuries

LTIR only counts injuries that already happened. The hazards that cause them usually turn up first in inspections: a frayed lanyard, an oil film on a nacelle floor, a missing guard, a lift plan that doesn’t match the load. Whether that finding becomes a lost-time case depends on what happens after the inspector writes it down.

The data shows where to look. Over 2023–2024, BLS counted 946,290 days-away, restricted or transfer cases caused by overexertion, repetitive motion and bodily conditions, the largest single cause. IOGP’s 946 lost work day cases in 2024 were led by slips and trips (22%). G+ named routine maintenance, manual handling and lifting operations as the highest-risk processes in offshore wind in 2025. These are exactly the conditions routine inspections are designed to catch.

How this works in practice:

• Turn findings into owned actions. A walkway hazard noted “for awareness” stays a hazard. A finding with a named owner, a deadline and a photo of the fix gets closed. Track corrective-action close-out time as a leading indicator alongside LTIR.
• Inspect the tasks that injure people, not just the assets. If manual handling drives your lost-time cases, add lifting-task observations to equipment checks: load weight, team lift, use of aids, access route. Your inspection forms should mirror your injury data.
• Watch repeat findings. The same hazards found on the same asset or site three inspections in a row means the corrective action didn’t work. That’s the best predictor you have of the next lost-time case.
• Feed lessons back into the work. When an investigation finds a root cause, update the checklist and the safety protocols the same week, so the next inspection checks for it.

Leading indicators that move LTIR:

• Percentage of inspection findings closed on time
• Overdue corrective actions per site
• Repeat findings per asset
• Near-miss reports per 200,000 hours
• Inspection completion rate against plan

If these improve over two or three quarters, LTIR usually follows. If LTIR improves while these get worse, see the previous section.

How Fluix Helps Field Teams Cut Lost-Time Injuries

Fluix is inspection management software for field teams. It doesn’t replace your OSHA log or your HSE system. Its job is to catch hazards early and get them closed, so fewer injuries reach your LTIR in the first place.

• Inspections and incident reports from the field, offline. Technicians complete checklists, safety observations and incident reports on a tablet or phone, with photos, timestamps and signatures, even on a turbine, a vessel or a remote site.
• Corrective actions that close. A failed check opens an action with an owner, a deadline and evidence attached, and managers see what’s overdue.
• Data you can analyze. Dashboards and visualizations show findings by site, asset and crew. Exports to Power BI and connections to AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT and Copilot let you put inspection data next to your lost-time cases.
• Audit-ready records. Every inspection, incident report and corrective action is stored with a full history, alongside the essential safety documents your auditors ask for.

RWE Renewables, for example, uses Fluix across wind farms with 493 turbines for maintenance inspections and to submit safety observation cards offline. Its technicians cut daily form completion time by 45% (read the RWE Renewables story).

See how Fluix works as inspection management software for safety teams.

FAQ

1. What does LTIR stand for? 

LTIR stands for Lost Time Incident Rate, also called the lost time injury rate. It measures how many work-related injuries or illnesses caused at least one full day away from work after the day of the incident, per 200,000 hours worked, which is about 100 full-time employees over a year. Restricted-duty cases are not included.

2. Is LTIR required by OSHA? 

No. OSHA requires employers to record days-away cases on the OSHA 300 Log and summarize them on Form 300A, but it doesn’t define or require an LTIR. You calculate the rate from your log data as part of wider safety compliance reporting. The closest official benchmark is the BLS rate of cases with days away from work.

3. Does a restricted-duty or light-duty case count as lost time? 

Not under US rules. If an injured worker returns on restricted duties or a job transfer and misses no full day after the injury, it’s a restricted case. It counts toward DART and TRIR but not LTIR. UK RIDDOR is different: being unable to do normal duties for more than seven days is reportable, even on light work.

4. How can you reduce lost time injuries? 

Start with the causes in your own data, which for most field teams are manual handling, slips and trips, and lifting. Inspect those tasks specifically, close corrective actions on time, and track repeat findings. Short, specific toolbox talks on last month’s near misses keep crews focused on the hazards that actually hurt people.

5. How do you convert LTIR to LTIFR? 

Multiply LTIR by 5. LTIR uses a 200,000-hour base and LTIFR uses 1,000,000 hours, so the same three lost-time cases over 420,000 hours give an LTIR of 1.43 and an LTIFR of 7.14. To convert LTIFR back to LTIR, divide by 5. Always state the base when you report either figure.

6. How does Fluix help track lost time injuries? 

Field teams use Fluix to submit incident reporting forms from the field, even offline, with photos, timestamps and signatures. Each report can trigger follow-up actions with an owner and deadline. Because incidents, inspections and corrective actions sit in one place, you can see which findings preceded each lost-time case.

7. Can I calculate LTIR from Fluix data? 

Yes. Fluix stores incident and inspection records with dates and case details, which you can export to Power BI or a spreadsheet and combine with your hours-worked data. Teams that connect Fluix to Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot can also query trends across sites, such as lost-time cases against overdue corrective actions.