A safety inspector, also known as occupational health and safety technician or specialist, examines and evaluates organizations, factories, machines, equipment, workplaces, and practices. This is to ensure compliance with state and federal regulations. They usually work for the government both in the office and on the field. Exposure to different risks is inevitable; therefore, safety inspectors must wear protective clothing and gear to ensure their safety while conducting inspections. Moreover, they maintain necessary reports and records to ensure compliance.
Employers seek candidates with at least a high school diploma or its equivalent. Candidates must also have two to three years of experience related to safety inspection. You must be an expert in Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards. Key skills for this job include problem-solving, attention to detail and communication skills. Having relevant certifications is a plus. Safety inspectors earn an average income of $62,515 per year. This varies between $33,000 and $119,000.
What is a Safety Inspector?
What Does a Safety Inspector Do
There are certain skills that many safety inspectors have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed ability to use technology, detail oriented and physical stamina.
How To Become a Safety Inspector
If you're interested in becoming a safety inspector, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 46.8% of safety inspectors have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 5.2% of safety inspectors have master's degrees. Even though most safety inspectors have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Safety Inspector Career Paths
As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, a safety inspector can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as safety coordinator, progress to a title such as supervisor and then eventually end up with the title project superintendent.
Average Salary for a Safety Inspector
What Am I Worth?
Roles and Types of Safety Inspector
There are several types of safety inspector, including:
Inspector
Role:
You probably already know from context clues that inspectors inspect things. Sure, the joke's not great but it's not inaccurate either. There are a lot of different types of inspectors out there. So what they're inspecting really depends on what type of inspector they are.
The fact that there are many different types of inspectors is truly a good thing for the career, though. While it means you have a tougher decision to make, it also means you have a lot of job opportunities to consider. The more opportunities, the better. We don't recall anyone complaining about too much job opportunity.
The attention is in the details for inspectors. Whether you're a quality control inspector, a parts inspector, a furniture inspector, or even a police inspector your job requires you to look at the fine print. Pay attention to the little things. You don't want to miss anything as an inspector, no matter how small it is.
- Average Salary: $38,757
- Degree: High School Diploma
Safety Coordinator
Role:
Are you interested in a career that combines office work with site work? If you have a keen interest in occupational health and safety and able to make sure that the workers are working safely in a safe working environment, a career as a safety coordinator may be right for you. Being a safety coordinator, you may assess, develop, and implement safety standards for manufacturing facilities and the construction and mining sites and projects.
Becoming a safety coordinator, you may get an incredible opportunity to educate staff and personnel about various health and safety topics. Moreover, a safety coordinator career offers job availability, excellent salaries, career advancement, and leadership opportunities.
Working as a safety coordinator, typically, you may work standard weekday working hours, shift work or overtime may come after an incident or a hazardous situation has been identified. You may spend a considerable amount of your time-on-site, which may be a construction site, production facility, or anywhere depending on the industry you're working.
To become a safety coordinator, typically, you may need a diploma or a degree in occupational health or safety or a closely related field. You may also get into this career by working your way up with an employer that hires a safety coordinator or a certification course. Becoming a safety coordinator, usually, you may work in various settings, such as construction companies, manufacturing companies, municipal, government, and federal safety agencies.
Your wages depend on your level of education, experience, and the region you work. However, you may earn a lucrative amount of $49,000, which may increase with your expertise and attention to your work. Not only that, but your positive attitude towards your work may lead you to a long and successful career.
- Average Salary: $61,604
- Degree: Bachelor's Degree
Safety Officer
Role:
A safety officer, also known as an occupational health and safety officer, is concerned with the environmental health and safety of a company or organization. The job of a safety officer is to conduct routine safety inspections to ensure that safety rules and guidelines are upheld. Routine safety inspections also help identify potential hazards.
A safety officer is also tasked with the responsibility of educating workers and implementing programs and policies that adhere to safety standards. Your job would include training staff on emergency procedures like CPR and fire protection systems. You would also be required to formulate actionable plans that can be used in times of emergency safety breaches.
It is important that as a safety officer, you stay updated with the latest trends in health and safety and that you constantly implement these trends and train staff accordingly. A minimum qualification of a bachelor's degree is required as well as registration as a health and safety officer. A safety officer typically earns about $23.01 per hour, which amounts to $47,867 per year.
- Average Salary: $46,336
- Degree: Bachelor's Degree
States With The Most Safety Inspector Jobs
Mouse over a state to see the number of active safety inspector jobs in each state. The darker areas on the map show where safety inspectors earn the highest salaries across all 50 states.
Number Of Safety Inspector Jobs By State
| Rank | State | Number of Jobs | Average Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | 1,657 | $58,751 |
| 2 | Texas | 1,042 | $42,494 |
| 3 | Florida | 951 | $37,646 |
| 4 | New York | 666 | $59,328 |
| 5 | Georgia | 662 | $37,046 |
| 6 | Pennsylvania | 654 | $55,634 |
| 7 | North Carolina | 643 | $43,547 |
| 8 | Virginia | 539 | $50,578 |
| 9 | Ohio | 506 | $47,277 |
| 10 | Illinois | 460 | $48,642 |
| 11 | Massachusetts | 453 | $57,282 |
| 12 | Michigan | 416 | $56,067 |
| 13 | Indiana | 395 | $45,684 |
| 14 | New Jersey | 368 | $63,688 |
| 15 | Tennessee | 338 | $42,303 |
| 16 | Colorado | 328 | $46,468 |
| 17 | Maryland | 299 | $51,726 |
| 18 | Arizona | 285 | $43,224 |
| 19 | Missouri | 284 | $41,722 |
| 20 | Washington | 283 | $57,437 |
| 21 | South Carolina | 267 | $41,518 |
| 22 | Alabama | 262 | $40,708 |
| 23 | Minnesota | 254 | $52,099 |
| 24 | Kentucky | 230 | $42,099 |
| 25 | Wisconsin | 214 | $49,001 |
| 26 | Iowa | 181 | $43,164 |
| 27 | Connecticut | 175 | $58,390 |
| 28 | Oregon | 175 | $53,255 |
| 29 | Louisiana | 137 | $40,760 |
| 30 | Utah | 136 | $48,915 |
| 31 | Nevada | 134 | $54,233 |
| 32 | Mississippi | 133 | $49,708 |
| 33 | Kansas | 127 | $41,503 |
| 34 | New Hampshire | 122 | $60,462 |
| 35 | Oklahoma | 113 | $46,433 |
| 36 | Arkansas | 110 | $40,748 |
| 37 | Maine | 98 | $53,169 |
| 38 | New Mexico | 93 | $42,759 |
| 39 | Idaho | 89 | $41,782 |
| 40 | Nebraska | 77 | $44,278 |
| 41 | Montana | 70 | $42,841 |
| 42 | West Virginia | 67 | $57,000 |
| 43 | Rhode Island | 56 | $59,714 |
| 44 | Vermont | 44 | $55,144 |
| 45 | Delaware | 43 | $58,869 |
| 46 | North Dakota | 43 | $52,219 |
| 47 | South Dakota | 40 | $50,712 |
| 48 | Alaska | 37 | $68,485 |
| 49 | Hawaii | 36 | $43,337 |
| 50 | Wyoming | 22 | $44,582 |
Top Skills For a Safety Inspector
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 13.0% of safety inspectors listed osha on their resume, but soft skills such as ability to use technology and detail oriented are important as well.
Choose From 10+ Customizable Safety Inspector Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Safety Inspector templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Safety Inspector resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Safety Inspector diversity
Safety Inspector Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among safety inspectors, 17.9% of them are women, while 82.1% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among safety inspectors is White, which makes up 62.6% of all safety inspectors.
- The most common foreign language among safety inspectors is Spanish at 61.7%.
Online Courses For Safety Inspector That You May Like
1. Leading Healthcare Quality and Safety
Ensuring patient safety and healthcare quality is critical and should be a key focus of everyone in healthcare practice. This course provides healthcare practitioners and others with an introduction to the knowledge and skills needed to lead patient safety and quality improvement initiatives at the micro and macro levels. Participants will explore the foundations of health care quality and the science underlying patient safety and quality improvement, design and select effective health care...
2. Setting the Stage for Success: An Eye on Safety Culture and Teamwork (Patient Safety II)
Safety culture is a facet of organizational culture that captures attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and values about safety. A culture of safety is essential in high reliability organizations and is a critical mechanism for the delivery of safe and high-quality care. It requires a strong commitment from leadership and staff. In this course, a safe culture is promoted through the use of identifying and reporting patient safety hazards, accountability and transparency, involvement with patients...
3. OSHA Safety Training: Conducting Safety Meetings
A Brief Safety Management Course for Current and Aspiring Safety Professionals...
Best States For a Safety Inspector
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a safety inspector. The best states for people in this position are Alaska, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Safety inspectors make the most in Alaska with an average salary of $68,485. Whereas in New Jersey and New Hampshire, they would average $63,688 and $60,462, respectively. While safety inspectors would only make an average of $59,714 in Rhode Island, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. New Hampshire
$60,462
Avg. Salary
2. New Jersey
$63,688
Avg. Salary
3. Nevada
$54,233
Avg. Salary
How Do Safety Inspectors Rate Their Jobs?
Top Safety Inspector Employers
Most Common Employers For Safety Inspector
| Rank | Company | Average Salary | Hourly Rate | Job Openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Enbridge | $78,001 | $37.50 | 26 |
| 2 | Exxon Mobil | $67,022 | $32.22 | 7 |
| 3 | Zachry Group | $58,717 | $28.23 | 13 |
| 4 | Zachry Construction | $58,046 | $27.91 | 9 |
| 5 | USDA | $57,075 | $27.44 | 49 |
| 6 | Lockheed Martin | $51,825 | $24.92 | 7 |
| 7 | CONSOL Energy | $51,358 | $24.69 | 22 |
| 8 | Maine | $50,846 | $24.45 | 11 |
| 9 | Gulf Interstate Engineering | $48,196 | $23.17 | 8 |
| 10 | Kinder Morgan | $47,674 | $22.92 | 11 |
Safety Inspector Videos
