Workers' Compensation Settlement Calculator

Introduction to workers' compensation settlement valuation

A workers' compensation settlement is not a jury award for pain and suffering. It is an arithmetic construction built from statutory wage-replacement benefits that an injured worker is already entitled to receive week by week, converted into a single sum. Every American workers' compensation system, whether a state programme or one of the federal programmes administered by the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Workers' Compensation Programs (OWCP), assembles that sum from the same three ingredients: indemnity for time lost while recovering, indemnity for whatever permanent impairment remains once the worker reaches maximum medical improvement, and payment for the medical treatment the injury requires.

What differs violently between jurisdictions is the arithmetic applied to each ingredient. The wage-replacement percentage, the weekly dollar ceiling, the number of compensable weeks assigned to a given body part, and the rate at which permanent awards are paid all come from the statute of the state or federal programme with jurisdiction over the claim. This calculator therefore does not pretend that there is one national formula. It exposes the four statutory parameters that actually drive the number, ships presets carrying published figures for New York, California, Florida, the federal Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act and the Federal Employees' Compensation Act, and lets you override every one of them for your own jurisdiction.

The output is an undiscounted gross indemnity figure: the total dollars of statutory benefit the claim generates before commutation to present value, before attorney fees, before liens and before any Medicare Set-Aside allocation. That is deliberately the most defensible number to compute, because it is the number the underlying statutes actually produce. Everything downstream of it is negotiation, and negotiation is not arithmetic.

How to use the estimator with your wage records and impairment report

Work through the form from top to bottom. Begin with the benefit rule preset. Choosing New York, California, Florida, Longshore or FECA fills the wage-replacement rate, the statutory weekly maximum, the statutory weekly minimum and the permanent-award rate with the published figures cited in the sources note below. Choosing Custom leaves those fields under your control so you can enter your own state's numbers from its workers' compensation agency.

Next enter the average weekly wage (AWW). This is a defined statutory term, not your current pay: most systems compute it from gross earnings over a look-back period, commonly the 52 weeks preceding the injury, and many include overtime, shift differentials, bonuses and the value of board or lodging. Use the AWW figure that appears on the wage statement filed by your employer's insurer, because that is the number the adjuster is using. If you selected the 80 percent of after-tax rule used in Alaska, Iowa, Maine and Michigan, enter the spendable (after-tax) weekly wage instead of the gross figure, because that rule is applied to net earnings.

Enter the weeks of temporary total disability — the number of weeks you were, or expect to be, wholly unable to work before reaching maximum medical improvement. Fractional weeks are allowed; enter 14.5 if that is what the record shows. Then enter the two permanent-disability parameters. The award weeks at total loss is the schedule figure your statute assigns to the injured body part for a complete loss, and the permanent impairment rating is the percentage your treating or evaluating physician assigned under the AMA Guides edition your jurisdiction has adopted. Finally enter the medical and related costs you are asking the settlement to cover, and press Calculate.

Two practical notes. First, if your state does not use a scheduled member system but instead publishes a weeks-per-percentage-point table — Florida is the classic example — compute the statutory week count yourself, enter it as the award weeks and set the impairment rating to 100 percent. Second, if the permanent award in your state is paid at a lower rate than the temporary rate, set the permanent-award rate accordingly; Florida pays impairment income benefits at 75 percent of the average weekly temporary total disability benefit.

The wage-replacement and impairment-rating formula behind the estimate

The calculation runs in four stages. Stage one converts the average weekly wage into a compensation rate. Let W be the average weekly wage, r the statutory replacement fraction, C the statutory weekly maximum and F the statutory weekly minimum. The applied weekly rate R is the replacement fraction bounded above by the maximum and below by the minimum, where the minimum itself can never exceed the worker's own wage:

This ordering matters and is the single most common error in informal settlement estimates. The cap is applied after the percentage, never before, so a worker earning $2,250 a week in New York does not receive two thirds of $2,250; the statutory ceiling truncates the rate. The Longshore Act states the rule explicitly at 33 U.S.C. 906(b): compensation may not exceed 200 percent of the national average weekly wage or the employee's full average weekly wage, whichever is less, and may not fall below 50 percent of the national average weekly wage unless the worker's own wage is lower still.

Stage two multiplies the applied rate by the weeks of temporary total disability T:

Stage three converts the impairment rating into compensable weeks. Where S is the scheduled weeks for a total loss of the member and I is the impairment percentage, the award weeks N are:

Those weeks are then paid at the permanent-award rate, which is the applied weekly rate multiplied by a statutory factor p expressed as a percentage — 100 percent in most scheduled-member states, 75 percent for Florida impairment income benefits:

Stage four adds the medical component M to produce the estimated settlement value V:

Some states replace the scheduled-member step with a piecewise weeks-per-point table. Florida Statutes section 440.15(3)(d) is representative: for accidents on or after 1 October 2003 the number of impairment weeks N awarded for an impairment rating I accumulates in bands.

A 12 percent Florida impairment therefore yields 2 × 10 + 3 × 2 = 26 weeks, which is why the Florida path through this calculator is to enter 26 award weeks and a 100 percent rating rather than a member schedule.

Scheduled weeks published in the statutes

The table below reproduces the scheduled weeks for total loss of a member as enacted in New York Workers' Compensation Law section 15(3) and, identically, in section 8(c) of the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act at 33 U.S.C. 908(c). These are statutory text, not estimates — but they are only two of more than fifty schedules in force nationally, and other states diverge substantially.

California takes a different route entirely. Labor Code section 4660 directs that the impairment descriptions and percentages come from the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, Fifth Edition, and Labor Code section 4658(e) converts the resulting whole-person disability percentage into weeks on a progressive scale: 3 weeks per point from 0.25 to 9.75 percent, 4 weeks per point from 10 to 14.75 percent, 5 weeks from 15 to 24.75 percent, 6 weeks from 25 to 29.75 percent, 7 weeks from 30 to 49.75 percent, 8 weeks from 50 to 69.75 percent, and 16 weeks per point from 70 to 99.75 percent. The severity of a disability therefore buys progressively more weeks per point, which is a policy choice, not a mathematical necessity.

Worked example: a 12 percent scheduled loss of use of an arm

Consider a warehouse worker with an average weekly wage of $2,250.00 who is out of work for 14 weeks after a crush injury, reaches maximum medical improvement with a 12 percent schedule loss of use of the right arm, and has $9,500.00 in unreimbursed and projected medical costs. Run the New York preset: replacement fraction two thirds, statutory weekly maximum $1,222.42, permanent-award rate 100 percent, arm schedule 312 weeks.

Stage one: $2,250.00 × 2/3 = $1,500.00 uncapped, but the New York maximum of $1,222.42 for injuries on or after 1 July 2025 truncates it, so the applied weekly rate R is $1,222.42. Stage two: 14 weeks × $1,222.42 = $17,113.88 of temporary total disability. Stage three: 312 × 0.12 = 37.44 award weeks, paid at 100 percent of $1,222.42, giving 37.44 × $1,222.42 = $45,767.40. Stage four: $17,113.88 + $45,767.40 + $9,500.00 = $72,381.28.

Now hold the injury and the worker fixed and change only the jurisdiction. The comparison below is the point of the whole exercise: identical medical facts, wildly different statutory arithmetic.

The Longshore figure is higher because the federal maximum of $2,082.70 does not bind at this wage level, so the full two thirds of $2,250 flows through both the temporary and the permanent components. The Florida figure is lowest because two independent statutory features push it down: the weeks-per-point table produces 26 weeks rather than 37.44, and impairment income benefits are paid at 75 percent of $1,358.00, or $1,018.50 a week. A spread of nearly $32,000 on identical medical facts is entirely a function of jurisdiction.

Interpreting the breakdown and the sensitivity band

The result panel reports the applied weekly rate and flags explicitly whether the statutory maximum or minimum bound it. That flag is worth attention: when the cap binds, additional earnings do nothing for the estimate, and the most productive negotiating levers become the impairment rating and the medical component rather than the wage. When the cap does not bind, a disputed AWW — an omitted overtime quarter, an excluded bonus — scales the entire indemnity figure proportionally and is often the most valuable thing to contest.

The sensitivity table shows what the settlement becomes if the impairment rating moves by five and ten percentage points in either direction. Impairment ratings are the most contested single number in the claim, routinely producing duelling reports from a treating physician and an insurer-retained independent medical examiner. Seeing that a five-point movement is worth, in the worked example, roughly $19,000 explains why that dispute consumes so much of the negotiation. It also gives you a defensible band to quote rather than a spuriously precise point estimate.

Treat the total as a ceiling on the indemnity conversation rather than a cheque. Because it is undiscounted, a structured settlement paying the same dollars over years is worth less; because it is gross, attorney fees (commonly a statutorily capped percentage), medical liens, child support arrears and any overpaid indemnity already advanced come out of it; and because it ignores the compromise element, a claim with genuine causation or apportionment exposure will settle below it while a claim with strong causation and a disputed rating may settle above it.

Limitations, assumptions and what this estimate deliberately omits

This is an educational estimator, not legal advice, and it is explicit about what it does not model. It does not discount future weekly payments to present value; a commutation formula of the form below, with d the statutory weekly discount rate, is applied in several jurisdictions and always reduces the figure:

It does not model permanent total disability, death and dependency benefits, disfigurement awards, vocational rehabilitation entitlements, second-injury fund apportionment, cost-of-living escalators, or the aggregate caps and duration limits that many states impose — Florida, for instance, limits temporary benefits to 104 weeks. It does not apply apportionment for pre-existing impairment, which can materially reduce a rating. It does not compute a Medicare Set-Aside allocation, which in a claim involving a Medicare beneficiary is frequently the largest single line in the settlement document. It assumes the medical figure you supply is accurate and already net of anything the carrier has paid directly.

It also assumes a single, clean set of statutory parameters. Real claims cross jurisdictional lines, involve exclusive-remedy and third-party liability questions, and turn on whether the injury is compensable at all. The preset figures are the published statutory values for the effective dates cited below and change on fixed annual cycles: the Longshore maximum resets every 1 October under section 10(f), the New York maximum every 1 July, and the California and Florida maxima every 1 January. Confirm the figure applicable to your date of injury, which is the date that governs, not today's date.

Finally, no calculator can capture the negotiation itself. Settlement values reflect litigation risk, the carrier's reserve posture, the worker's return-to-work prospects and the credibility of the medical record. Use this output to understand the mechanics, to check whether an offer is in the right order of magnitude, and to arrive at a conversation with an adjuster or attorney knowing which variable is actually driving the money.

Sources. Wage-replacement rates, statutory caps and scheduled weeks in this calculator are taken from: U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, National Average Weekly Wages (NAWW), Minimum and Maximum Compensation Rates, and Annual October Increases (Section 10(f)), giving an FY2026 NAWW of $1,041.35, a maximum rate of $2,082.70 and a minimum of $520.68 effective 1 October 2025; U.S. Department of Labor, OWCP, Pamphlet LS-560, Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act benefits; 33 U.S.C. 906 and 33 U.S.C. 908(c), Longshore compensation schedule; New York Workers' Compensation Law section 15, Schedule in case of disability and New York Workers' Compensation Board Subject No. 046-1754, setting the maximum weekly benefit at $1,222.42 for injuries on or after 1 July 2025 against a New York State Average Weekly Wage of $1,833.63; Florida Department of Financial Services, Division of Workers' Compensation, Maximum Compensation Rate Table ($1,358 maximum and $20 minimum for 2026 under Florida Statutes 440.12(2)) together with Florida Statutes 440.15(2) and 440.15(3); California Labor Code sections 4453, 4658 and 4660 and the California Department of Industrial Relations announcement of 2026 temporary total disability rates ($1,764.11 maximum, $264.61 minimum); the Federal Employees' Compensation Act, 5 U.S.C. 8105 and 8110, for the 66 2/3 percent basic and 75 percent augmented rates; and the American Medical Association, AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, Fifth Edition (2000) and Sixth Edition (2008), which supply the impairment percentages that state statutes convert into weeks. Industry-wide benefit trends are published annually by NCCI in its State of the Line report. Statutory figures change on fixed annual cycles; always verify the values in force on your date of injury. This page is an educational estimate and is not legal advice.