The Voucher and the Supplement

Two benefits, worth $11,000 together, that a great many injured California workers never claim.

The deadline that costs people $5,000.

The $5,000 Return-to-Work Supplement must be applied for within one year from the date your voucher was served on you.

Not one year from your injury. Not from your settlement. Not from when you spend the voucher. From service of the voucher — which may be years before your case ends, and which starts a clock nobody reminds you about.

The voucher itself stays usable for two to five more years. The supplement does not. The two benefits have different lifespans and the shorter one is silent.

The voucher — $6,000

If your injury caused permanent partial disability and your employer did not offer you qualifying work, you are entitled to a Supplemental Job Displacement Benefit — a $6,000 non-transferable voucher (Labor Code § 4658.7, injuries on or after January 1, 2013).

Three things must be true

1. Date of injury on or after January 1, 2013
2. The injury caused permanent partial disability — 0% permanent disability means no voucher, and so does 100% permanent total disability, because it is not partial
3. Your employer failed to make a timely, qualifying offer of work

What counts as a qualifying offer

The offer must be made no later than 60 days after the claims administrator receives the first report from the treating physician, AME, or QME — on the Administrative Director's mandatory form — finding that your condition is permanent and stationary for all conditions claimed and that the injury caused permanent partial disability.

And the work offered must last at least 12 months.

Details that decide cases:

• The 60 days runs from receipt by the claims administrator — not the physician's report date, not the permanent and stationary date.
• It is triggered by the first qualifying report. Later or supplemental reports do not restart the clock.
• The absence of a completed form does not always excuse the carrier: where the medical report itself contains enough information to establish permanent partial disability and work capacities, the voucher can still be owed.
• "It would have been impossible to employ this worker" is not a defense. The statute requires a good-faith, compliant offer.
• If you lost no time from work, or returned to the same position you held at the time of injury, you are deemed to have been offered and accepted regular work — no voucher (8 CCR § 10133.31(c)).

Once the 60 days expires without a qualifying offer, the voucher must be offered within 20 days (LC § 4658.7(c)).

(The panel decisions supporting several of these points are persuasive, not binding.)

What the $6,000 can be spent on

Claim the $500 first. It is payable on request, without itemized documentation or accounting, and it can be taken as an advance. Most workers never ask for it.

What is expressly excluded: transportation, travel, telephone or internet access, clothing or uniforms, and incidental expenses. The $500 miscellaneous allowance is the only money available for any of those.

Note also that tools are covered only when required by a training program you are enrolled in. Tools for a job, standing alone, are not.

The claims administrator must pay or reimburse within 45 calendar days of a completed, documented request.

When it expires

Two years from the date the voucher is furnished to you, or five years from the date of injury — whichever is later.

Whichever is later, not earlier. A voucher furnished one year after injury runs to year five. A voucher furnished four and a half years after injury runs until roughly year six and a half.

The trap: expenses must be both incurred and submitted with documentation before the expiration date. Enrolling in a program that continues past expiration does not preserve reimbursement for the portion after it. This catches people constantly.

Can it be settled for cash?

Generally no for modern injuries. Labor Code § 4658.7(g) states flatly that settlement or commutation of an SJDB claim "shall not be permitted."

The line to understand:

• Accepted claim, permanent partial disability established, no qualifying offer of work → the voucher must issue and cannot be bought out.
• Genuinely disputed claim — where compensability itself or liability for particular body parts is in real dispute — the WCAB has approved resolving voucher entitlement as part of an adequate Compromise and Release, on the reasoning that the right to a voucher presupposes a compensable injury. That authority is a panel decision, not binding, and § 4658.7(g) remains on the books. Individual judges vary.
• For injuries before January 1, 2013, the older versions of the benefit could be settled and commuted, and that remains true for those cases.

One consequence to price into any settlement: the voucher is the only door to the $5,000 Return-to-Work Supplement. Resolving away a voucher entitlement forfeits the supplement too.

And a candid observation: the voucher has been $6,000 since 2013, with no indexing mechanism. It has not increased in thirteen years. In real terms it buys substantially less retraining than it did when the Legislature set it.

The supplement — $5,000

The Return-to-Work Supplement Program pays a one-time $5,000 to workers whose earnings loss is disproportionate to their permanent disability rating.

Where that number comes from matters. Labor Code § 139.48 creates the program and funds it at $120 million a year from the Workers' Compensation Administration Revolving Fund, but it does not set the payment. The statute delegates eligibility and amount to the Administrative Director by regulation. The $5,000 is the Director's figure, published by DIR — not a figure in the Labor Code. So it can change without any legislation, and a reader checking § 139.48 for "$5,000" will not find it there. (Verified against § 139.48, 8 CCR §§ 17301–17306, and DIR's own program page, August 20, 2026.)

Eligibility is simple, and narrow:

• You received an SJDB voucher for an injury on or after January 1, 2013.
• You have not already received a supplement — with one exception: you may receive another if you get a new voucher from a later injury that occurred after all prior supplements were received.

No voucher, no supplement. The voucher analysis above is upstream of the entire $5,000.

The one-year deadline

One year from the date the voucher was served on you. Verified against 8 CCR § 17304(a), the mandatory cover-sheet notice in § 17303, and DIR's own program page.

Every voucher is required to carry a cover sheet reading, in these words:

"Because you have received this Voucher and are unable to return to your usual employment you may be eligible for a Return-to-Work Supplement. You must apply within one year from the date this Voucher was served on you."

The clock runs whether or not your case is still open, whether or not you have a lawyer, and whether or not you have spent a dollar of the voucher.

How to apply

Electronically only. Paper applications are not accepted.

You will need: the voucher itself as a PDF or TIFF attachment, your ADJ case number(s), your workers' compensation claim number, your Social Security or tax ID number, and the proof of service date.

Every DWC district office has a kiosk with a computer, scanner, and printer for this purpose.

Applications meeting the regulatory requirements shall be approved — this is not discretionary. But DWC has warned publicly that applications missing the required attachments or details will be denied, and there is no cure period in the regulations. A denial for a missing attachment while the one-year clock runs out is unforgiving.

Submit one application per claim, and check the attachments twice.

RTWSP: [email protected] · (510) 286-0787, Monday–Friday, 8:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

Program status verified against DIR materials current as of late 2025; the regulations remain in force and the funding source is outside the General Fund. Confirm the program is accepting applications before relying on this page for a filing decision.

Frequently asked questions