The 2026 temporary disability rates, and which year’s rate you get

The 2026 numbers, and where they come from

Two limits, announced once a year, each with a date.

For an injury on or after January 1, 2026, temporary disability pays no less than $264.61 a week and no more than $1,764.11. The Division of Workers’ Compensation, the state agency that runs the system, announced both figures on November 21, 2025, in DIR Newsline 2025-116.

Where the figures come from. The law does not set the weekly rates directly. It sets the lowest and the highest weekly wage that temporary disability can be figured on, and the rates are two-thirds of those wages. For 2026 the wage limits are $396.91 and $2,646.16 a week. Two-thirds of $396.91 is $264.61. Two-thirds of $2,646.16 is $1,764.11.

What moves them. The wage limits rise each January 1 by the percentage increase in the state average weekly wage: the average weekly pay of California workers covered by unemployment insurance, measured over the 12 months ending March 31 of the year before the injury. For 2026 that figure rose from $1,704 to $1,789, an increase of 4.98826%, and both limits rose by the same 4.98826%.

It is generally not taxed. Temporary disability is generally free of federal, state and local income tax, which is why two-thirds of your gross pay is often closer to your take-home pay than it sounds. If you also receive Social Security disability, the part of your benefit that reduces it can be taxable.

Every rate, with its effective date and source Temporary disability

Every recent year, and why 2024 did not move

The limits follow wages up, and stand still when wages fall.

Your date of injury usually decides which year’s limits apply, so the year matters more than this year’s figures. These are the weekly limits by year of injury, with the notice that announced each:

• 2026: $264.61 to $1,764.11 (Newsline 2025-116, November 21, 2025).
• 2025: $252.03 to $1,680.29 (Newsline 2024-90, October 16, 2024).
• 2024: $242.86 to $1,619.15 (Newsline 2023-84, November 27, 2023).
• 2023: $242.86 to $1,619.15 (Newsline 2022-95, November 17, 2022).
• 2022: $230.95 to $1,539.71 (Newsline 2021-109, October 25, 2021).
• 2021: $203.44 to $1,356.31 (the figures Newsline 2021-109 raised).

2023 and 2024 are the same, and that is not a typo. In the 12 months ending March 31, 2023, the state average weekly wage fell, from $1,651 to $1,642. The law raises the limits by the percentage increase in that wage, so a decrease triggered no adjustment, and the 2024 limits stayed where 2023’s were. A table that assumes the figures change every January 1 is a year off from 2023 back, and some published tables are.

2022 was announced twice. The DWCDWC Division of Workers’ Compensation, part of the Department of Industrial Relations. Administers the system. Information Services Center: 1-800-736-7401. first said the 2022 limits would stay at the 2021 figures, then replaced that announcement on October 25, 2021, with the increase above, on a corrected wage figure. A chart that shows $1,356.31 for a 2022 injury is using the withdrawn number.

The 2027 limits. When this article was last reviewed, on October 20, 2026, the DWC had not announced the limits for 2027 injuries; the last three announcements came between mid-October and late November. Through the two-year rule below, they will also reach some older claims still being paid in 2027.

How the weekly rate is figured

Two-thirds of one number, inside the year’s limits.

The formula fits on one line. Take your average weekly wage, the figure the law builds from your pay before the injury, and take two-thirds of it. If the result is below your year’s floor, you are paid the floor; if it is above the ceiling, you are paid the ceiling. Anything in between is paid as figured.

Three illustrative workers, all hurt in 2026:

• A part-time worker earning $350 a week. Two-thirds is $233.33, below the floor. The check is the 2026 minimum, $264.61, which is more than two-thirds of the wage.
• A full-time worker earning $1,200 a week. Two-thirds is $800.00, between the limits, so the check is $800.00.
• A worker earning $3,000 a week. Two-thirds is $2,000.00, above the ceiling. The check is $1,764.11. Every dollar of weekly wage above $2,646.16 is outside the formula.

The flat part at the top is not an error. If you were hurt in 2026 and earned more than $2,646.16 a week, your check is less than two-thirds of your pay, and the difference is not recoverable as temporary disability. It also means a mistake in your wage figure may not change your check at all.

When it is paid. The first payment is due within 14 days after your employer learns of the injury and the disability, and after that every two weeks. A payment that comes late is increased by 10% automatically, without your having to ask.

If you go back at reduced pay. Temporary partial disability pays two-thirds of your weekly loss in wages, up to the same maximum. An illustrative worker who earned $1,200 a week and now earns $900 has lost $300 a week, and is paid $200.

The weekly benefits calculator Light duty pays less: the wage-loss calculator

The number underneath: your average weekly wage

Four methods in the statute, and the claims administrator chose one.

If two-thirds of your pay lands between the limits, your average weekly wage decides the check. It is usually computed once, near the start of the claim, from whatever payroll records the claims administrator had, and it stays in the file until someone challenges it.

The Labor Code gives four ways to compute it, depending on how you were paid:

• Regular full-time work. For 30 or more hours and five or more days a week, the number of working days a week times your daily earnings when you were hurt.
• Two or more employers. The earnings from all of them, added together and computed as one week. Which job you were hurt at can affect how the others are counted.
• Irregular pay. For piecework, commission, or pay set by the week, month or another period, your actual weekly earnings averaged over up to one year.
• Everything else. Where the job was under 30 hours a week, or none of the others can reasonably and fairly be applied, the amount that reasonably represents your weekly earning capacity when you were hurt, giving due consideration to your actual earnings “from all sources and employments.” For seasonal work or uneven hours, it is meant to reach a fair figure, not the last few thin paychecks.

What belongs in it. Regular overtime, bonuses and commissions, shift differentials, reported tips, and the value of lodging, meals or fuel your employer provided. And a second job’s earnings, the item most often left out, because the claims administrator usually has payroll only from the employer where you were hurt.

What an error costs. Take an illustrative worker with two jobs, hurt at the one paying $700 a week, with $500 a week at the other. The average weekly wage is $1,200, and the check is $800 a week. Figured on the first job alone, the check is $466.67, which is $333.33 a week less. Anywhere in the middle band, each dollar the wage figure is short costs about 67 cents a week, for as long as temporary disability lasts.

The average weekly wage calculator I have two jobs. Does the second one count?

Which year’s limits apply to you

The date of injury picks the year, for the life of the claim.

The general rule is short. Your date of injury picks the year, and that year’s floor and ceiling govern your temporary disability for as long as the claim runs. A 2025 injury paid in 2026 does not get the 2026 ceiling.

What that means for a long claim. A fixed year cannot cut your rate. What it can do is leave a long claim on limits several years old while new injuries are paid on higher ones.

Your date of injury may not be the day you think. For a single accident it is the day it happened. For an injury that built up over time, called cumulative traumaCT — Cumulative trauma Injury from repeated exposure over time. The largest injury category in California and the least claimed., or an occupational disease, the law sets the date of injury as the date you first suffered disability and knew, or should have known, that work caused it. That date can fall years after the work began, and it decides which year’s limits apply. If the claims administrator is using a different date from yours, raise it, because the limits and the two-year rule move with it.

Read the year on your paperwork. Find the date of injury and the weekly rate on your benefit notices or stubs, and check both against the figures above. A 2025 injury capped at $1,619.15 is being paid at the 2024 ceiling, $61.14 a week short of the $1,680.29 that 2025 sets.

The two-year rule

Two years on, a check is figured at the limits of the day it is paid.

The one exception to the date-of-injury rule is a single sentence of the Labor Code.

The sentence goes on to say that a payment is not figured this way if doing so would produce a lower payment because the minimum went down. The rule only raises.

In plain terms: once two years have passed since your injury, each temporary total disability payment uses the floor and ceiling in force on the day it is paid. In Hofmeister v. WCABWCAB Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board. The court system that decides these cases. 23 district offices statewide., decided in 1984, the Court of Appeal read it that way, observing that “the statute makes no reference to rates in effect on the date of ‘injury.’” Where payment had been delayed two years or more, the rate on the date of payment governed; the rule’s purpose was to spare workers the effect of inflation during the delay.

How it works, check by check.

• It is figured payment by payment. A payment made the week before the second anniversary uses your injury year’s limits; one made the week after uses the current year’s.
• It moves again each January 1. If you are still being paid when a new year’s limits take effect, the payments from then on use them.
• It only matters at the floor or the ceiling. The rule changes the limits, not your wage. If two-thirds of your wage sat between the old limits, nothing changes.
• Nobody has to apply. Like the 10% added to a late check, it works by itself. A payment held to the old limits after the second anniversary is a short payment.

At the ceiling (illustrative). A warehouse lead is hurt in March 2024 with an average weekly wage of $2,700. Two-thirds is $1,800, more than any ceiling since, so for 40 weeks the check is $1,619.15, the 2024 maximum. The lead goes back to work at the end of 2024, then has surgery in June 2026 and is off again for 20 weeks. Those payments come after the second anniversary, so each is $1,764.11, the 2026 maximum: $144.96 a week more, $2,899.20 over the 20 weeks.

Between the ceilings (illustrative). The same history with an average weekly wage of $2,500. In 2024, two-thirds of it, $1,666.67, is above the ceiling, so the check is $1,619.15. In 2026 the ceiling is above $1,666.67, so after the anniversary the check is two-thirds of the wage itself, $1,666.67. The raise is $47.52 a week, not the full difference between the ceilings.

At the floor (illustrative). A 2024 injury paid at the 2024 minimum, $242.86, moves to the 2026 minimum, $264.61, for payments made after the anniversary: $21.75 a week more.

Two honest limits.

• Total, not partial. The rule reaches temporary total disability only. Temporary partial disability, permanent disabilityPD Permanent Disability. Compensation for lasting impairment. A different and much lower weekly rate — 2026 maximum $290/week., the life pensionLife pension Payable at 70%–99% after the PD award is exhausted. § 4659(a): 1.5% of average weekly earnings per point above 60 — with earnings capped at $515.38 since 2006. and death benefits stay where their own rules put them.
• Past-due pay is argued over. When a delayed claim pays a lump sum of past-due temporary disability more than two years after the injury, lawyers for employers argue that the rule reaches only the weeks of disability after the second anniversary, not past-due weeks paid after it. Hofmeister points the other way, but no modern published decision squarely settles the question.

If it was missed. A short payment is exposed to the automatic 10% increase, and, where the delay was unreasonable, to an increase of up to 25% of the amount delayed or up to $10,000, whichever is less, pursued within two years of the date the payment was due.

The 10% the law adds to a late check Late payments and penalties

When the two-year rule can reach you

Continuous checks run out of weeks at about the second anniversary.

Temporary disability is generally limited to 104 compensable weeks within five years of the date of injury, and 104 weeks is two or three days short of two years. So a worker paid continuously from the week of the injury usually runs out of weeks at about the second anniversary, leaving the two-year rule little or nothing to reach.

It matters when weeks are left after the second anniversary, or when the payment itself comes late:

• Temporary disability that stopped and started. You went back to work, then came off again for a surgery, a flare-up or a return to work that failed. Weeks you did not use in the first two years are still there inside the five-year window.
• The nine conditions that get 240 weeks. Acute and chronic hepatitis B, acute and chronic hepatitis C, HIV, amputations, severe burns, high-velocity eye injuries, chemical burns to the eyes, pulmonary fibrosis and chronic lung disease get 240 weeks within the five years, so those claims can run well past the second anniversary.
• A cancer under the firefighter and peace officer presumption. For injuries on or after January 1, 2023, a separate rule gives up to 240 weeks for a cancer covered by that presumption, with no five-year window at all.
• A delayed claim paid late. A denied claim later accepted or won can produce temporary disability paid two or more years after the injury, which is where the argument over past-due pay lives.

A payment held to the old limits after the second anniversary is a short payment.

The five-year window still closes. The two-year rule adds no weeks, and under the 104-week limit and the 240-week list, no temporary disability is paid for time more than five years after the injury. Count every week paid, total and partial: if you are past the second anniversary with weeks to spare, the rule may matter to you.

Workers’ comp checks stopped? Why they end, and what comes next Catastrophic injuries

Which date sets each benefit

Injury date, payment date, travel date.

The date that governs a rate differs from benefit to benefit, and the rules sit side by side in the same claim, which is how they get swapped.

• Temporary total disability. The date of injury, until two years have passed; after that, the date of each payment.
• Temporary partial disability. The date of injury, for the life of the claim. The two-year rule does not reach it.
• Permanent disability. The schedule in effect on the date of injury. For an injury in 2014 or later, the weekly rate is $160 to $290, unchanged since January 1, 2014, because those limits are not indexed to wages.
• The life pension and permanent total disabilityPTD Permanent Total Disability. 100%. Paid at the temporary disability rate for life.. A rating of 70% or more adds a weekly life pension after the permanent disability weeks run out, and a rating of 100% pays the temporary disability rate for life. For injuries on or after January 1, 2003, both rise each year with the state average weekly wage. In Baker v. WCAB, decided in 2011, the California Supreme Court held that the increases begin on the January 1 after the worker first becomes entitled to and actually begins receiving the payments.
• Death benefits. Paid in installments at the worker’s temporary disability rate, and not less than $224 a week.
• Medical mileage. The date you traveled, not your date of injury. In 2026 that is 72.5 cents a mile for trips from January 1 to June 30, and 76 cents for trips from July 1.

Which mileage rate your trip earns Permanent disability

What to check on your own checks

Seven checks, from paper you already have.

Most of what decides the check is on the benefit notices, the stubs and your own pay records.

• Your date of injury — As the claims administrator has it, and for an injury that built up over time, the date you first suffered disability and knew, or should have known, that work caused it.
• Your year’s limits — Match the date to the figures above. A 2025 injury’s ceiling is $1,680.29; a 2024 injury’s is $1,619.15.
• The wage figure — Which method was used, and on which pay records, with your own stubs and second-job records beside it.
• The arithmetic — Two-thirds of the wage figure, then the floor or the ceiling if either applies. The weekly benefits calculator does it with the right year’s limits.
• The second anniversary — Your date of injury plus two years. Every temporary total disability payment after it should use the limits in force when it was paid.
• Your week count — Every week of total and partial disability paid, against 104, or 240 for the nine listed conditions, and the date five years after the injury.
• The payment dates — Every two weeks after the first. A late payment carries an automatic 10%.

If a number is wrong, put it in writing. One email to the adjuster with the date of injury, the wage figure, the year’s limits and the rate you believe is owed. A written question creates a written answer.

The weekly benefits calculator How much do I get paid while off work?

When you do not need a lawyer for this

Most rate questions are arithmetic.

Not every question about a rate calls for a lawyer.

• A rate that is simply wrong. If the year or the arithmetic is off, an email with the figures often fixes it. Every district office of the Division of Workers’ Compensation has a free Information & Assistance officer who helps unrepresented workers with exactly this kind of notice.
• A late check’s 10%. You do not need a lawyer to be paid it. You need the dates.
• A check at the ceiling. If you were hurt in 2026, earned more than $2,646.16 a week and are paid $1,764.11, the check is right.

A review is worth having when the wage figure is disputed, when a second job or seasonal work was left out, or when a delayed claim is paying past-due benefits after the second anniversary. A consultation with this office costs nothing, and if there is nothing worth doing, we will tell you that.

When you don’t need a lawyer