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Answer · Recordkeeping

What counts as restricted work under OSHA?

2 min read Checked against current CFR text Sep 2026 Reviewed by Renae Irek
Short answer

A restriction counts as restricted work only when it is imposed to prevent the injury or illness getting worse, or to allow recuperation from it.

A restriction placed on an injured employee for some other reason — protecting a product, meeting a customer rule — is not recordable restricted work, even though the employee is genuinely restricted.

29 CFR 1904.7 Letter of interpretation, 21 November 2016 Read it on osha.gov.

The link that has to exist

The restriction must connect to a medical need. OSHA's example concerned an employee with a work-related laceration kept away from a biological production area to protect the integrity of the product being made. Genuinely restricted, genuinely injured — and not recordable restricted work, because the reason for the restriction was operational rather than medical.

Two ways a restriction arises

The employer imposes it, or a health care professional recommends it. Either can produce recordable restricted work. Neither produces it if the reason is not the injury.

Where this is easy to get wrong in a trade business

A customer or a general contractor may bar an injured worker from a site under its own rules. That is a restriction with a commercial cause, not a medical one, and it should be assessed on that basis rather than recorded reflexively.

Related questions

Each answers one question with the rule it comes from.

Recordable if we have no light duty available? 1904.7 He worked part of the shift and went home — day away or restricted? 1904.7(b)(3)(i) Does the day of the injury count as a day away?

Safety Sherpa is software, not a safety consultancy. This page quotes the cited regulation and links to the source text so you can read it yourself. It is not legal advice and does not replace a qualified person's judgment about a genuinely unclear case — our tools walk you through the decisions the regulations require and record your reasoning. The determination is yours to make.