What your permanent disability rating means, number by number

Where the line comes from

A doctor’s finding, put through the state’s schedule.

Permanent disability is what is left once you have recovered as far as you are going to. When a doctor finds you permanent and stationaryP&S / MMI Permanent and Stationary / Maximum Medical Improvement. Your condition has plateaued — not that you are healed. Temporary disability ends here., meaning your condition has stopped improving with treatment, the doctor measures what the injury took and writes it as a whole person impairmentWPI — Whole Person Impairment The percentage from the AMA Guides that a rating is built from. Extremity percent is not whole person percent: 100% upper extremity = 60% whole person, 100% lower extremity = 40%. This is the most common source of confusion in a rating. under the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, Fifth Edition. That number is then put through the state’s Permanent Disability Rating Schedule, adopted effective January 1, 2005, for injuries on or after that date. The schedule adjusts the impairment for your occupation and your age.

Who writes it. The string often appears inside the report of your treating doctor or of a medical-legal evaluator: a Qualified Medical EvaluatorQME Qualified Medical Evaluator. A state-certified physician who resolves disputes. Unrepresented workers get a panel of three by random draw., a QME, chosen from a state panel, or an Agreed Medical EvaluatorAME Agreed Medical Evaluator. A physician both sides agree on. Available only to represented workers, and practically very hard to move away from. both sides chose. The Disability Evaluation Unit, the state office that rates medical reports, produces it on a formal rating. Once the unit has a complete package, it must calculate and serve the rating within 20 days.

The presumed answer, but not the last word. A rating under the schedule is the starting measure of your permanent disability. It can be rebutted, and the side that disputes it carries the burden of showing why. In practice that means the person who wants a different number has to build the reasons into the medical record.

Six fields, always in the same order. Every string has six fields, separated by dashes. The rest of this article takes them in order, using the Division of Workers’ Compensation’s own published example: a janitor with a lower back injury in 2019, 15.03.01.00 – 8 – [1.4]11 – 340G – 13 – 15.

The rating string decoder What is a rating string?

Field one: what was rated, and how

Chapter, region, method: the code says what the doctor measured.

The first field, 15.03.01.00, is the impairment number. It is read in pairs. The first two digits are the chapter of the AMA Guides that covers the body part: 15 is the spine, 16 the upper extremities (the arm, from the shoulder to the fingertips), 17 the lower extremities, and 18 pain. The pairs after it narrow it down. In the example, 03 is the lumbar spine, the lower back, and 01 is the method used to rate it. The schedule’s own illustration of another code is 15.01.02.02: the cervical spine, the neck, rated by range of motion, for a soft tissue injury.

Check the method, not just the body part. The same body part can sometimes be rated more than one way, and the method decides the number. A back placed in a category by its diagnosis and a back rated by how far it moves are different calculations. The report should name its method, and the code should match it. A number without a method cannot be checked.

One string for each impairment. Each injured body part, and sometimes each condition within one, gets its own string. Lay them side by side against your treatment records. A body part that was treated and has no string contributes nothing to the rating, however real the injury.

When the code itself is the problem. Some injuries rate poorly by the book. A repaired rotator cuff whose motion came back can rate zero, because the shoulder is rated almost entirely by how far it moves. Under Almaraz/GuzmanAlmaraz/Guzman The doctrine permitting a physician to depart from the strict AMA rating where it does not accurately reflect the impairment, using another method inside the “four corners” of the Guides., an en banc decision of the Appeals Board in 2009, a physician may use another method inside the four corners of the Guides where the strict rating does not fairly reflect the impairment. The report has to give the strict rating, explain why it fails, and explain why the other method is more accurate. That case is built before the evaluation, not requested after it.

A repaired rotator cuff rated zero? What is Almaraz/Guzman?

Field two: the doctor’s number

Impairment is not disability.

The second field, 8, is whole person impairment: the physician’s measure, as a percentage, of how much of the function of the whole person the injury has taken. It is the only number in the string a doctor writes. The doctor writes one number. The schedule writes the rest, and you can check every step.

An imaginary average worker. The schedule treats the impairment as describing a worker of average age, 39, with average demands on every part of the body. The fields that follow correct toward the real worker: what you did all day, and how old you were. That is why an 8 can end as a 15.

Extremity is not whole person. Doctors often write an arm or a leg as a percentage of that limb. A total loss of an upper extremity is 60% of the whole person, and of a lower extremity 40%. A shoulder report that says “20% upper extremity” means 12% whole person, not 20. A limb figure read as a whole person figure overstates the rating by a wide margin, and it is the most common source of confusion in a rating.

Pain adds a little, and only to something. The schedule allows an add-on for pain under chapter 18 of the Guides, made at the whole person level, before any adjustment. In the schedule’s words, “The maximum allowance for pain resulting from a single injury is 3% WPI.” And the add-on cannot be included where the underlying rating for the industrial condition is zero. Pain can supplement a rating. It cannot create one.

The doctor writes one number. The schedule writes the rest, and you can check every step.

My pain is worse than my rating Sent to a QME? From the panel to the report

Field three: the 1.4

One multiplication, and a calculator can check it.

The third field, [1.4]11, is the adjustment for diminished future earning capacityFEC / DFEC Future Earning Capacity / Diminished Future Earning Capacity. An adjustment factor applied to older injuries.. The number in the brackets is the factor, and the number after them is the result. For injuries on or after January 1, 2013, the factor is a flat 1.4 for everyone. The impairment is multiplied by 1.4 and rounded to the nearest whole number: 8 times 1.4 is 11.2, which rounds to 11.

The easiest check in the string. Multiply the second field by 1.4 and round. An impairment of 10 should read [1.4]14. An impairment of 12 should read [1.4]17, because 12 times 1.4 is 16.8. A 12 sitting next to an adjusted 12 is wrong on its face.

A single digit in the brackets means the older system. For injuries from 2005 through 2012, the brackets hold a future earning capacity rank from 1 to 8 instead. Each rank stands for a factor between 1.1, a 10% increase, and 1.4, a 40% increase. The schedule’s own worked example, for an injury under that system, is 15.01.02.02 – 8 – [5]10 – 470H – 13 – 11: rank 5 turns an impairment of 8 into 10.

Check the year against the brackets. An injury from 2013 or later should show 1.4. An injury from 2005 through 2012 should show a single digit. A string that shows the other one was built under the wrong law.

Field four: your occupation

Assigned by what you did all day, not by your job title.

The fourth field, 340G, is two things: an occupational group number and a variant letter.

The group. The schedule sorts occupations into 45 numbered groups, from 110 to 590. The first digit ranks how physically arduous the work is, from 1 to 5. Some of them:

• 110 managers, lawyers and judges;
• 112 secretaries;
• 250 bus and taxi drivers;
• 322 cooks and servers;
• 340 janitors and nurse aides;
• 351 forklift operators;
• 360 warehouse workers and packers;
• 380 carpenters, electricians, plumbers and roofers;
• 460 general laborers;
• 480 construction laborers;
• 490 police officers, firefighters and correctional officers.

The variant. The letter says how hard your occupation works the particular body part being rated. It comes from a table that crosses the impairment with the occupational group, so one job can carry a different letter for a back than for a hand. F is average. C, D and E mean lighter demands on that body part; G through J mean heavier ones.

The argument almost nobody knows exists. The group is supposed to follow your duties, not your title. The schedule lists occupations by name; where a job is not on the list, its group is found by comparing its duties with a listed occupation. Titles are written by human resources departments. A hospital “Environmental Service Representative” is a housekeeper. A “Logistics Associate” may be a warehouse worker. If the group on your string does not match the work you actually did, say so, and bring the proof: a job description, what you lifted and how often, how long you stood. Correcting the group is one of the highest-leverage, lowest-cost arguments in a California claim.

Fields five and six: occupation, then age

Two lookups in printed tables, and no formula for either.

Field five, 13, is the rating after the occupational adjustment. It is not calculated. It is read from a table in the schedule: the row for the adjusted rating, the column for the variant. In the example, a G carried the 11 to 13. The check here is that the group and the letter are right. If they are, the table does the rest.

Field six, 15, is the final permanent disability. It is the rating after the adjustment for your age on the date of injuryDate of injury For a cumulative or occupational disease claim, the law sets it as when you first suffered disability and knew or should have known it was work-related — not when the wear began. Almost every deadline runs off this.. Not your age at the evaluation, at the rating or at the settlement: your age the day you were hurt. Older workers rate higher and younger workers lower, and the neutral bracket is 37 to 41. The reasoning is the capacity to retrain.

Younger, so lower. In the schedule’s own worked example, a heavy furniture assembler injured at 30 sees an occupation-adjusted 13 drop to 11. Same injury, same job, a younger worker, a lower rating.

This is the number that pays. Field six is the percentage the money is calculated from. In the janitor’s example, the age adjustment alone added two points.

How permanent disability works

More than one body part

Combined, not added, and the combination can be challenged.

When one injury produces ratings for more than one body part, they are not simply added. They are combined, under the schedule’s Combined Values Chart. Combining takes each further rating only from the part of the person not already rated. The schedule gives the formula as a + b(1 − a), with the two largest ratings combined first and the result rounded before the next is combined with it.

What that does to the numbers. Illustratively, ratings of 20% and 10% do not make 30%. They combine to 28%: the 20, plus 10% of the 80 that is left.

The chart can be rebutted. In Vigil v. County of Kern, an en banc decision of the Appeals Board in 2024, the Board held that the Combined Values Chart may be rebutted. Where impairments interact, so that each makes the other worse, adding them can be the more accurate measure. It is not automatic. The report has to explain, with reasons, how the conditions compound each other, and that is built deliberately, usually with the evaluator.

What the line does not show: apportionment

The paragraph that can cut the number most is not in the string.

A rating string shows what the impairment is. It does not show how much of it the employer pays for. That is apportionment: dividing permanent disability between the work injury and other causes, with the employer liable only for the share the work injury caused. A string can be arithmetically perfect and still be cut in half by a paragraph elsewhere in the report. What is missing from a rating string is often worth more than what is in it.

A percentage, with reasons. A physician who addresses permanent disability has to state what approximate percentage of it was caused by the injury and what percentage by other factors, including any prior industrial injury. Under EscobedoEscobedo The en banc decision requiring an apportionment opinion to explain how and why. A percentage without reasoning is not substantial evidence. v. Marshalls, an en banc decision of the Appeals Board in 2005, the physician has to explain how and why. A report that names a condition, such as arthritis, degeneration, age or a prior injury, and attaches a percentage without reasoning is not substantial evidence.

Apportionment is to disability, not to an X-ray. Under City of Petaluma v. WCAB (Lindh), decided by the Court of Appeal in 2018, a pre-existing condition that never disabled anyone can still support apportionment; prior disability is not a prerequisite. What the law still requires is proof that the other cause caused part of this disability. The strongest single fact is usually one you can answer yourself: were you doing your full job, without restrictions, the day before you were hurt?

A prior award is different. If you have a prior award of permanent disability, that disability is conclusively presumed to still exist. The rule applies to a prior award, not to a prior injury, and a claim that settled by compromise and release without an award of permanent disability is not a prior award.

Only doctors apportion. In Nunes v. State of California, Department of Motor Vehicles, an en banc decision of 2023, the Appeals Board held that only reporting physicians determine apportionment, and that there is no statutory provision for “vocational apportionment.”

Apportionment

From percentage to weeks and dollars

A point is not a point: higher ratings earn more weeks for each one.

The final percentage becomes a number of weeks under a table set by statute, and the statute says the figures are cumulative. Each band of the rating earns its own number of weeks for each percentage point, and the bands add up as the rating climbs.

What it comes to. At the maximum weekly rate, 5% is 15 weeks, or $4,350; 15% is 50.50 weeks, or $14,645; 25% is 100.75 weeks, or $29,218; 50% is 271.25 weeks, or $78,663; and 70% is 433.25 weeks, or $125,643. A 50% rating pays far more than twice a 25% rating, and a 70% rating more than four times as much.

The weekly rate. For injuries on or after January 1, 2014, permanent disability is paid at $160 to $290 a week, depending on your earnings before the injury. The rate has not changed since 2014. Unlike temporary disability, it does not rise with wages, so a worker injured in 2026 is paid at limits set twelve years earlier. Injuries before 2014 have their own, lower limits.

The example, in money. The janitor’s 15% is 50.50 weeks. At the maximum rate, that is $14,645, and the two points the age adjustment added are worth $2,392.50 of it.

At 70% or more, a life pension. A rating of 70% or more adds a weekly payment for the rest of your life, on top of the permanent disability weeks, beginning when those weeks run out. For injuries on or after January 1, 2003, it rises each year with the state average weekly wage. At 99%, it starts at up to $301.50 a week. A settlement that does not account for it can leave six figures behind.

At 100%, a different kind of award. A rating of 100% is permanent total disability. It is paid at the temporary disability rate for life, and it too rises each year: for a 2026 injury, up to $1,764.11 a week. The step from 99% to 100% is the largest single step in the schedule.

• How the adjuster does the math
• A workers’ comp settlement offer, read line by line
• Permanent total disability

Checking your own string, and correcting it

A calculator, the report, your own records, and short clocks.

Most of the checks need nothing more than the report, a calculator and what you know about your own work. The site’s rating string decoder reads a string you paste in, checks that the six fields agree with each other, and converts the final percentage into weeks and dollars. It does not build a rating from scratch: that takes the schedule’s own tables.

• The method in field one — Does the code match the method the report names, and is there a string for every body part you were treated for?
• The 1.4 in field three — For an injury in 2013 or later, the impairment times 1.4, rounded to the nearest whole number, must equal the number after the brackets.
• The group and the letter in field four — Against what you actually did all day, not your job title, and the letter against the body part being rated.
• The age in field six — Your age on the date of injury, not on the day of the rating.
• The apportionment paragraph — Does it explain how and why, and does the list of records reviewed include anything from before the injury?
• 70% and above — The life pension, accounted for before anything is signed.

If you do not have a lawyer. You may ask the evaluator to correct factual errors in the medical report on QME Form 37, within 30 days of receiving the report. Separately, you have 30 days from receiving the Disability Evaluation Unit’s summary rating to ask in writing for reconsideration of it.

If you have a lawyer. The tools are a supplemental report from the evaluator, a deposition of the evaluator, and a challenge to the report as not substantial evidence. An apportionment opinion that does not explain itself is the usual target.

Before the settlement conference. Discovery generally closes at the mandatory settlement conference. A wrong occupational group, a missing body part or an apportionment without reasons is correctable before it. Afterward, generally, it is too late, which is why the weeks after a rating arrives are when a review is worth the most.

When you do not need a lawyer for this

Many ratings are right, and you can confirm it yourself.

Many ratings are correct. If the arithmetic checks, the group matches the work you did, the age is your age on the day of the injury, every injured body part has a string and nothing is apportioned, you may not need anyone to tell you the number is right. The state’s Information and Assistance officers answer questions about a claim at no cost.

A consultation is worth having when one of these is in the file: an apportionment percentage, especially to a prior injury; an occupational group taken from a job title; more than one body part; a strict rating that plainly misses the injury; or a rating near 70% or near 100%, where a single point changes the award. 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, and what changes the answer