Oklahoma City is quietly climbing the safety charts. The metro now employs about 12 workplace safety managers per 10,000 workers, a ratio that puts OKC 14th among large U.S. metros. That concentration reflects how the local industry mix and recent construction activity are driving demand for compliance and risk management staff, offering a snapshot of how employers are staffing up safety teams as projects and operations expand.
As reported by The Journal Record, the ranking comes from an analysis by Trace One that measured workplace safety manager employment across all 50 states and nearly 300 metropolitan areas. The Journal Record noted that the metric is meant to flag where oversight burdens may be heaviest.
How the study counted safety staff
Trace One defined workplace safety managers as the combination of occupational health and safety specialists and technicians (SOC 19-5011 and 19-5012) and used the BLS 2025 OEWS data to calculate ratios per 10,000 employees. The firm’s analysis found that national employment in those roles rose about 165% from 2010 to 2025, far outpacing overall job growth, and it shows that metros with concentrated industrial, energy or extraction activity tend to have higher safety staffing densities. Those patterns help explain why OKC, with manufacturing, construction and growing tech infrastructure projects, ranks above many more service oriented metros.
Federal projections point to more hiring…