You have a percentage on a piece of paper and no idea what it is worth. This runs that percentage through your own state's statutory formula, prints every line of the arithmetic, and tells you plainly when your state pays nothing on a rating alone. Four of the twenty do. Priced at each state's own maximum weekly rate, a 15% whole-person rating pays $167,775 in Iowa and $12,810 in Ohio.
Rates verified September 18, 2026 · how we calculate · changelogAdd your weekly wage to see the award. Texas pays 70% of your wage rather than the two-thirds most states use, and impairment income benefits start the day after maximum medical improvement. The rate rises to $920 for injuries on or after 1 October 2026.
The table below is not a survey of what people settled for. It is the same arithmetic the calculator just ran, applied identically in every state: a 15% whole-person rating paid at each state's maximum weekly rate, aged 40 where age matters. Pricing every state at its own cap is what isolates the statute from the wage. Earn less than the cap and your award scales down with your rate, which is what the calculator above does with your actual figure.
| State | 15% rating pays | How the rating converts | Statute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iowa | $167,775 7/2026–6/2027 | Rating × 500 weeks × ⅔ of wages, capped at $2,237 | Iowa Code §85.34(2)(v) |
| New Jersey | $107,910* 2026 | Rating × 600 weeks, at a rate that scales with the award | N.J.S.A. 34:15-12 |
| Tennessee | $91,328 injuries 7/1/2026–6/30/2027 | Rating × 450 weeks × 66⅔% of wages, ×1.35 if you are not back at equal pay | Tenn. Code Ann. §50-6-207 |
| Illinois | $81,350 7/2025–6/2026, the newest published figure | Rating × 500 weeks × 60% of wages, capped at $1,084.66 | 820 ILCS 305/8(d)2 |
| Wisconsin | $68,100 injuries on/after 4/1/2026, $462 from 1/1/2027 | Rating × 1,000 weeks × the flat $454 rate | Wis. Stat. §102.44(3) |
| Colorado | $67,575 7/2026–6/2027 | Rating × age factor × 400 weeks × the capped weekly rate | C.R.S. §8-42-107(8)(d) |
| North Carolina | $65,070 2026 | Rating × 300 weeks × ⅔ of wages, capped at $1,446 | N.C.G.S. §97-31 |
| Missouri | $40,691 injuries 7/1/2026–6/30/2027 | Rating × 400 weeks × 66⅔% of wages, capped at $678.18 | RSMo §287.190 |
| Washington | $40,645 date of injury 7/1/2026–6/30/2027 | Your percentage of a $270,966.87 total-bodily-impairment baseline | RCW 51.32.080 |
| Texas | $40,050 FY Oct 2025–Sep 2026, $920 for injuries on/after 10/1/2026 | 3 weeks per rating point at 70% of wages, capped at $890 | Tex. Labor Code §408.121 |
| Georgia | $36,000 injuries on/after 7/1/2023 | Rating × 300 weeks × ⅔ of wages, capped at $800 | OCGA §34-9-263 |
| Florida | $35,648 2026 | 2, 3, 4 or 6 weeks per rating point by band, at 75% of the temporary rate | Fla. Stat. §440.15(3)(c) |
| Indiana | $30,685 injuries 7/1/2026–6/30/2027 | Degrees of impairment × a tiered dollar value per degree | IC §22-3-3-10 |
| Oklahoma | $20,250 injuries on/after 7/1/2025 | Rating × 360 weeks × 70% of wages, capped at a flat $375 | 85A O.S. §45(C)(4) |
| California | $14,645 injuries on/after 1/1/2014 | A statutory weeks-per-point table, paid at $160 to $290 a week | Lab. Code §4658(e) |
| Ohio | $12,810 2026 | Rating × 200 weeks × ⅔ of wages, capped at $427 | ORC §4123.57 |
* New Jersey's weekly rate is set by a chart that scales with the size of the award, so its figure is a ceiling at the 2026 maximum rather than an estimate.
Two patterns are worth pulling out of that table. The first is that a high weekly rate does not mean a high award, because the week count moves just as much as the rate does. The second is that the permanent rate is often a fraction of the temporary rate you have already been paid. That is why the first impairment cheque shocks people so reliably. Missouri pays permanent partial disability at $678.18 a week against a temporary maximum of $1,294.71. California pays $290 against $1,764.11.
These four are the reason we will not publish a single national chart. In each one, a whole-person percentage fed into a weeks formula produces a number with no basis in the statute.
| State | What the rating actually does | What decides the money instead | Statute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pennsylvania | A rating changes your benefit status, it does not buy you an award | Pennsylvania's impairment rating evaluation is not a payout calculation. After 104 weeks of total disability benefits the insurer can request one, and a rating below 35% of total body impairment moves you from total to partial disability, which is capped at 500 weeks. A rating of 35% or more keeps you on total disability. The rating decides how long you are paid, not a lump sum. Specific losses, meaning amputations and loss of use, are the separate track that does pay a scheduled award. | 77 P.S. §511.3 (Act 111) |
| New York | Scheduled members pay on loss of use, everything else pays on lost earning capacity | A limb, hand, foot or eye is a scheduled loss of use, so a percentage there does convert into weeks and dollars, and the calculator for that sits on our New York page. A back, neck or systemic injury is non-schedule permanent partial disability, where the award runs 225 to 525 weeks based on your loss of wage-earning capacity rather than your medical impairment percentage. Feeding a whole-person rating into a weeks formula here produces a number with no legal basis. | WCL §15(3)(w) |
| Michigan | No permanent partial rating schedule for general disabilities | A rating can still matter as evidence of disability, but the money question here is what the open wage-loss stream is worth if you redeem it. Amputations and total loss of use run on a separate specific-loss schedule. | MCL 418.361 |
| Arizona | Scheduled injuries pay in months, unscheduled ones pay on lost earning capacity | An unscheduled injury, which is what most whole-person ratings describe, is compensated for loss of earning capacity under §23-1044(C), so the award turns on what you can still earn rather than on the rating itself. | A.R.S. §23-1044 |
Pennsylvania deserves the extra warning, because the search term and the legal mechanism point in opposite directions. The insurer can request an impairment rating evaluation after paying 104 weeks of total disability benefits. A rating under 35% of total body impairment then moves you from total disability to partial disability, and partial runs out after 500 weeks. Nobody writes you a cheque for the percentage. What the rating changes is how long the payments last.
This is the mistake that costs the most, and it happens before any formula runs. An impairment report can express the same injury on three different scales. A shoulder injury might be written as 30% of the upper extremity. That is not 30% of the whole person, and every state formula on this page expects the whole-person figure.
California's Division of Workers' Compensation states the upper-extremity conversion in plain words in its own practitioner guidance: a 10% upper-extremity impairment converts to 6% whole person, or multiply by .6. Texas DWC training material gives the matching figure for the leg, where the lower extremity is weighted at 40% of the whole person. So a 30% upper-extremity rating is an 18% whole-person rating, and a 30% leg rating is 12%. The calculator above does that conversion for you when you tell it which scale your report used.
If your report gives a figure for a hand, a thumb, a foot or a single digit, ask the rating physician for the whole-person equivalent rather than converting it yourself. Those parts convert through their own tables first, and the chain of conversions is where errors compound.
If you have a 20% rating for your back and a 10% rating for your knee, you do not have 30%. The AMA Guides combine impairments rather than adding them, so the second rating applies only to the part of you the first one left. California's rating schedule writes the formula out, a + b(1 − a). That is why a combined values chart exists at all.
| Larger rating first | the Guides combine, they do not add | 20% |
| Remaining whole person | 100% − 20% | 80% |
| Second rating applied to what is left | 10% × 80% | 8% |
| Combined rating | 20% + 8% | 28% |
| What simple addition would have claimed | 20% + 10% | 30% |
Two points of rating sound like a rounding error. In Iowa at the current maximum, two points of whole-person rating is ten weeks of benefits, which is over $22,000. With three or more ratings, California's schedule tells raters to combine the two largest first, round that, then bring in the next one. The order changes the result slightly, so it is worth knowing.
Colorado is the only state in this set where your date of birth changes the award. The statute multiplies your rating by an age factor. It starts at 1.80 for a worker of 20 or younger and falls by 0.02 a year, down to 1.00 at 60 and over. At 25 the factor is 1.70. At 40 it is 1.40. Same rating, same wage, and here is what that does:
| Aged 25 at injury | 15% × 1.70 × 400 weeks × $804.46 | $82,055 |
| Aged 60 at injury | 15% × 1.00 × 400 weeks × $804.46 | $48,268 |
| Difference for identical injuries | $82,055 − $48,268 | $33,787 |
The weekly rate in that arithmetic is the temporary total rate, capped at 50% of the state average weekly wage. That is $804.46 for the current year. Colorado also caps temporary and permanent benefits combined at $202,297.46 for ratings of 19% or less and $328,049.94 above that, and the calculator applies whichever cap your rating falls under.
Every figure on this page was checked against the statute or the agency bulletin. Here is what that exercise turned up, starting with our own mistake, because a page about other people's arithmetic errors should open with its own.
It is the statutory award for your impairment, and nothing else. It does not price future medical treatment, which is frequently the larger half of a comp settlement and the reason insurers want the claim closed. It does not account for a Medicare set-aside if you are on Medicare or close to eligibility, and that requirement can delay or reshape a settlement. It does not include temporary benefits already paid, or mileage, or vocational rehabilitation.
It also assumes the rating is right. A rating is one examiner's opinion, produced under one edition of the AMA Guides, and a second opinion is a normal part of the process in most states. If the number above is well below what you expected, check which scale it was written on before you argue about the arithmetic.
It depends entirely on which state you were injured in, and the range is larger than most people expect. Run a 15% whole-person rating through each state's own statute, priced at that state's maximum weekly rate. The award comes to $167,775 in Iowa, $12,810 in Ohio, and nothing at all in four states, because those four pay on wage loss or earning capacity rather than on a rating. Between the highest and lowest of the states that do pay on a rating that is a 13.1-fold spread, for the same injury and the same wage.
No, and every site that publishes one is selling you a fiction. Impairment rating is a medical measurement, taken from the AMA Guides, and it means roughly the same thing everywhere. The conversion from that measurement into money is written into each state's workers' compensation act, and the acts are not similar. Some multiply your rating by a whole-body week count. Indiana pays a tiered dollar amount per degree. Washington pays a percentage of a fixed dollar baseline. Colorado multiplies by an age factor. Pennsylvania uses the rating to change your benefit status rather than to pay an award. A single chart cannot describe those systems without lying about at least four of them.
In most states yes, in two of the states here no, and in one state barely. Sixteen of these twenty systems multiply a weekly rate derived from your wage by a number of weeks. So the wage matters until it hits the state cap. Past that point, extra earnings stop counting. Washington and Indiana ignore your wage entirely for permanent partial disability. Wisconsin technically uses two-thirds of your wage but the cap of $454 binds for nearly every full-time worker, so the rate is effectively flat.
Impairment is what the doctor measures, and it describes loss of function under the AMA Guides. Disability is what the law does with that measurement, and it can include your occupation, your age, your education and your ability to earn. California makes the gap explicit: whole-person impairment is multiplied by 1.4, then adjusted for occupation and age, and only the result is the permanent disability rating that gets paid. Illinois lists five factors and says no single one decides the award. If you enter a raw medical figure into a formula that expects a disability rating, you will understate what you are owed.
Often, but a lump sum is a different transaction from the award this page calculates. The award is what the statute owes you for the rating. A settlement is a negotiated price for closing the claim, which in most states also closes your right to future medical care and your right to reopen if you get worse. Those two numbers move for different reasons, and the arithmetic here is only the anchor for the first one.
Three common reasons. The rating may be written on an extremity scale rather than the whole-person scale, so a 25% upper-extremity figure is a 15% whole-person figure before any money is calculated. Two separate ratings combine rather than add, so 20% and 10% make 28% and not 30%. And the edition of the AMA Guides matters. States are not all on the same one, and the Sixth Edition produces lower figures than the Fifth for several common injuries.
Every rate, week count and dollar baseline here was checked against the state agency's own bulletin or the statute on September 18, 2026. Each state's citation is printed with its row. Most states reset on 1 July, Texas on 1 October and Oklahoma on 1 January, so anything undated on this subject is probably stale. Where a state has not published a newer figure we say which window the old one covers rather than implying it is current.