Counting OSHA Days Away From Work: Calendar Days, Weekends and the Cap

A Friday-afternoon injury and a Monday question

A warehouse supervisor at a regional distribution center closes out a Friday shift at 4:50 p.m. One of her pickers hurt his back lifting a pallet at about 1:15 p.m., saw a clinic that afternoon, and the clinic told him not to work until the following Thursday. The supervisor now has to fill in the OSHA 300 Log. She also has to answer a question that comes up constantly: do the weekend days count?

Her colleague says to count five workdays. The payroll clerk says the picker is only scheduled four days next week, so the count is four. Neither answer starts from the regulation.

By the end of this article you will be able to count days away from work the way 29 CFR 1904.7 describes, apply the 180-day cap, and recognize where the rule stops and your own decision begins.

What the rule says about OSHA days away from work counting

Reference material with citations, not legal advice. You decide recordability and compensability, and you file.

Start with the recording clock, because the day count sits inside it. An employer must enter each recordable injury or illness on the OSHA 300 Log and the 301 Incident Report within seven calendar days of receiving information that a recordable case has occurred (29 CFR 1904.29(b)(3), eCFR current October 15, 2026). The clock runs from information that a recordable case occurred, so it depends on a recordability decision that belongs to you.

Days away from work is one of the outcomes that can make a case recordable. Once you decide the case involves days away, the unit is the calendar day, not the workday and not the scheduled shift. The regulation's own cap language says so directly:

"you may "cap" the total days away at 180 calendar days" — 29 CFR 1904.7(b)(3)(vii) (eCFR current October 15, 2026)

Paragraph (b)(3) of 1904.7 works through how to count, in sub-paragraphs (i) through (ix). Two of them settle the basics. Under (b)(3)(i), "you begin counting days away on the day after the injury occurred or the illness began." Under (b)(3)(iv), you count "the number of calendar days the employee was unable to work as a result of the injury or illness, regardless of whether or not the employee was scheduled to work on those day(s)." Read the full paragraph in the eCFR text of 1904.7 before you rely on this summary.

Applied to the Friday example, the picker's weekend days are not skipped just because he would not have been scheduled. The count follows the calendar. The decision that those days are days away because of a work-related injury is yours to make, based on the health care professional's recommendation and the facts of the case.

Weekends, holidays and days the employee was not scheduled

Weekends and holidays are the most common source of miscounts, and they matter because they change which column the case lands in and how large the number gets.

The short answer to "do weekends count as days away OSHA" is that the count is by calendar day. Under 1904.7(b)(3)(iv), weekend days, holidays, vacation days and other days off are included "if the employee would not have been able to work on those days because of a work-related injury or illness." A Friday injury with a Monday return, and no weekend shift, is covered separately by (b)(3)(v): you record it only if a health care professional indicates the employee should not have worked, or should have done only restricted work, over the weekend.

Three situations are worth working through, and each should be confirmed against paragraph (b)(3) of the regulation:

• Part-time or irregular schedules. The count does not shrink because the employee works three days a week. It follows the calendar days of incapacity.
• Shutdowns. For an injury on the day before scheduled time off, such as a holiday, a planned vacation or a temporary plant closing, (b)(3)(vi) says to record the case only if a health care professional indicates the employee should not have worked, or should have done only restricted work, during that time off.
• Resuming work mid-week. The count ends when the employee is back at work or the period ends. A return on a Thursday means the days before Thursday count and Thursday itself does not.

These are rule explanations, not new thresholds. If you are unsure how a specific schedule pattern applies, check the regulation text or ask OSHA or your State Plan agency. California, Michigan and North Carolina run their own State Plans, so a site there should confirm with its state program as well.

The 180-day cap and cases that cross a year-end

The 300 Log does not need an endless running tally. An employer may cap the count of days away from work, or days of restriction, at 180 calendar days (29 CFR 1904.7(b)(3)(vii)). The wording is permissive: you may cap. Once a case has reached 180, you can stop counting and enter the capped number.

Year-end is the other pressure point. A case that begins in one year and causes days away in the next calendar year is recorded only once, in the year it occurred (1904.7(b)(3)(ix)). OSHA's wording is "No, you only record the injury or illness once."

In practice, a case from a December incident stays on that year's 300 Log. Days that fall after January 1 still count toward that case, which means you may need to update the entry after the year closes. This matters when the 300A summary is prepared, because the 300A must be posted no later than February 1 of the following year and kept posted until April 30 (29 CFR 1904.32(b)(6)). For a case with days still running when you prepare the summary, (b)(3)(ix) says to estimate the total calendar days you expect, use that number for the annual summary, and update the log entry later. The count you carry into the 300A is the count you can defend, with the date you last updated it.

Restricted work, job transfer and what you decide

Days away is one count. Days of job restriction or transfer is the other, and the two are tallied separately on the log. The OSHA restricted work definition in 1904.7(b)(4)(i), in plain words, covers cases where the employer keeps the employee, or a health care professional recommends that the employee not do one or more routine job functions or not work the full workday the employee would otherwise have worked. Under (b)(4)(xi), restricted and transfer days are counted the same way as days away. Confirm the full definition against the eCFR text. The related question of whether light duty makes a case recordable is covered in Is light duty OSHA recordable?.

Here the rule stops and your judgment starts. The regulation tells you what counts as restriction and how to count it. It does not tell you whether a specific modified assignment was in fact a restriction of routine functions. You make that call, with the regulation in front of you and the health care professional's recommendation as an input.

Some edge cases that employers ask about, each tied to a sub-paragraph of 1904.7(b)(3):

• Doctor-recommended days the employee does not take. Under (b)(3)(ii), you record the days away the health care professional recommended, whether or not the employee follows the recommendation. Under (b)(3)(iii), if the employee stays home after being told to return, the count ends on the recommended return date.
• Employee leaves the company. Under (b)(3)(viii), if the employee leaves for a reason unrelated to the injury, such as retirement, a plant closing or another job, you may stop counting. If the employee leaves because of the injury, you must estimate the total days and enter that count.
• A case that moves between categories. An employee may be away for some days, then return on restriction. The days are counted in their respective columns, and the case is recorded once.

For scale, BLS reported a median of 8 days away from work among private-industry cases with days away in 2024, and 888,100 such cases (BLS IIF, 2024). Among cases with job transfer or restriction, the median was 15 days over 2023–2024 (BLS). These are national medians, not a benchmark for your site.

If the underlying question is whether a case is recordable at all, start with OSHA recordable injury and recordable vs first aid first. The day count only matters once that decision is made.

Keeping the count defensible

A day count is only as good as the record behind it. Three habits help.

First, write down the date you learned of the case and the date of the health care professional's recommendation. The seven-calendar-day recording clock runs from information that a recordable case occurred, and a note in the file shows when that was.

Second, keep the log current. Update days away and days restricted as the case develops, and note the date of the last update. Employers keep the OSHA 300 Log, 300A and 301 for five years following the end of the calendar year the records cover (29 CFR 1904.33(a)), so a count entered today may be read years from now.

Third, remember access. An employee, former employee or employee representative can ask for a copy of the 300 Log, and you must provide it by the end of the next business day (29 CFR 1904.35(b)(2)(iii)). A government representative's request carries a four-business-hour window (1904.40(a)). The log is a document other people read. For help filling it in, see the OSHA 300 Log guide.

Where a workbook fits

Spreadsheet counts usually go wrong in the same place: someone subtracts dates, drops weekends by habit, forgets the cap, or never updates a case after year-end. A date difference gives a number, but it does not record the rule behind it.

The OSHA Recordability Decision Workbook is a reference tool built from the regulation text. It computes days-away and restricted counts and applies the 180 calendar-day cap. Those outputs are meant to roll into a log and the 300A. It does not decide whether a case is recordable. You decide recordability, and you file.

If you run a single-state operation with 20–100 employees, a workbook is likely the right fit. It does not require a subscription, and it suits a handful of cases a year. ClaimsIntake is also being built as an app that will pull deadlines and the OSHA record from one injury report. You can join the waitlist, but the app is not available today.

Your next step: pull the three most recent cases on your 300 Log with days away. Recount each by calendar day and check whether any hit the cap. Then read paragraph (b)(3) of 29 CFR 1904.7 side by side with your entries, and confirm any remaining questions with OSHA or your State Plan agency.