Temporary Disability

Temporary disability is the money that replaces your wages while you cannot work. It is two-thirds of your average weekly earnings, subject to a floor and a ceiling set by your date of injury, and it runs out — usually at 104 weeks.

Most pages about it stop there. Three things below are worth more than the definition.

If your claim was denied and you are now being paid back temporary disability, read the section on Labor Code § 4661.5. When a temporary total disability payment is made two or more years after the date of injury, it is computed using the rate limits in effect on the date of payment — not the date of injury. On a delayed claim at the cap, that difference can run to tens of thousands of dollars. Carriers routinely pay at the old rate. It is self-executing; nobody has to ask.

The rates

Your rate is set by your date of injury and does not change as the years pass — except under § 4661.5 below.

2023 and 2024 are the same figures, and that is not a typo. The State Average Weekly Wage fell in the twelve months ending March 31, 2023 — from $1,651 to $1,642 — so no adjustment was triggered and the 2024 rates carried over unchanged (DWC Newsline 2023-84). This is the year that breaks published rate tables. Anyone who assumed rates rise every January produced a chart that is shifted from 2023 backward, and a shifted chart gives the wrong answer for every date of injury in that range.

For 2026, the maximum applies to workers earning $2,646.16 a week or more; the minimum applies below $396.91. The State Average Weekly Wage rose from $1,704 to $1,789 — an increase of 4.98826% — which is what drove the 2026 figures.

Unlike permanent disability, temporary disability does index to wage growth each year. That distinction matters and almost nobody explains it.

How average weekly earnings are calculated

The number that drives everything, and the one most often understated on the first check.

Your average weekly wage should include:

• Overtime, if it was regular
• Bonuses and commissions
• Concurrent employment — earnings from a second job count
• In-kind wages — employer-provided lodging, meals, fuel
• Tips, where reported
• Shift differentials and premium pay

For workers with irregular hours, seasonal work, or variable earnings, Labor Code § 4453(c)(4) provides a catch-all method designed to reach a figure that fairly reflects earning capacity — not simply the last few thin paychecks.

Check the first benefit notice against your own pay records. An average weekly wage calculated off base hourly pay alone, for someone who regularly worked overtime or held a second job, is the most common and most correctable error in a California claim — and it compounds across every week of benefits.

When it starts, when it ends

The waiting period. No temporary disability is payable for the first three days after you leave work — unless disability continues more than 14 days or you are hospitalized as an inpatient. In either case, temporary disability is payable from day one, retroactively. The three days are erased, not merely postponed (LC § 4652).

The first payment. Due within 14 days of the employer's knowledge of the injury and disability (LC § 4650(a)).

Late payment carries an automatic 10%. Under LC § 4650(d), any late temporary or permanent disability payment is increased by 10% — and it is self-imposed, meaning the carrier is supposed to add it without you asking. It frequently does not. In 2024, the DWC Audit Unit cited 588 violations for late first temporary disability payments and 452 for late subsequent payments, in audited files alone. Pull your payment ledger and check the dates.

When it ends. Temporary disability ends when you return to work, when you are found permanent and stationary, or when you hit the cap.

The 104-week cap

For dates of injury on or after January 1, 2008: 104 compensable weeks within five years of the date of injury (LC § 4656(c)(2)).

Read that carefully. It is not 104 weeks from when payments start. It is 104 weeks inside a five-year window that begins on the date of injury.

Which produces a real trap. A worker whose claim is denied and litigated for four years has, in practical terms, about one year left to draw 104 weeks of benefits. The clock ran while the case was being fought.

(For dates of injury between April 19, 2004 and December 31, 2007, a different rule applies — 104 weeks within two years from the date the first temporary disability payment was actually made. Under Hawkins v. Amberwood Products (WCAB en banc, 2007), that clock starts on the date payment is first made, not the date it was first owed.)

The nine exceptions — up to 240 weeks

Under LC § 4656(c)(3), a worker suffering from any of the following gets 240 compensable weeks within five years:

1. Acute and chronic hepatitis B
2. Acute and chronic hepatitis C
3. Amputations
4. Severe burns
5. HIV
6. High-velocity eye injuries
7. Chemical burns to the eyes
8. Pulmonary fibrosis
9. Chronic lung disease

This list is closed. There is no catch-all for catastrophic injury. A worker with a devastating spinal cord injury gets 104 weeks; a worker with an amputation gets 240.

One more. Under LC § 4656(d), added by SB 1127 for dates of injury on or after January 1, 2023, a firefighter or specified peace officer with a cancer injury under LC § 3212.1 gets up to 240 compensable weeks — and notably, subdivision (d) contains no five-year outer window at all.

A gap the Legislature has not closed

If your treatment was wrongly denied and the denial was later overturned on Independent Medical Review, the weeks you spent waiting still count against your 104. Two bills would have fixed this — AB 1213 (2023–24) and SB 1346 (2024). Both failed.

As of August 2026 there is no IMR-delay exception to the 104-week cap. The delay is the worker's to absorb.

Labor Code § 4661.5 — the raise nobody claims

This is the most valuable section on this page.

The statute: when a temporary total disability payment is made two years or more from the date of injury, the payment is computed using the average weekly earnings limits in § 4453 in effect on the date the payment is made — not the date of injury. And if the current minimum happens to be lower, the payment is not reduced. It is a one-way ratchet.

What that means in dollars. A worker injured in 2020 was capped at $1,299.43 a week. If that worker is still receiving temporary total disability in 2026, the payment should be computed at the 2026 maximum of $1,764.11.

That is $464.68 more per week — roughly $24,163 a year.

The published authority. Hofmeister v. WCAB (1984) 156 Cal.App.3d 848 held that where payment has been delayed two or more years, the weekly earnings amount is set at the statutory rate on the date of payment: "The statute makes no reference to rates in effect on the date of 'injury.'" The purpose was to relieve workers of the consequences of inflation during the delay.

Why this is money left on the table. On its face, a lump sum of back temporary disability paid in 2026 for a 2021 period on a 2020 injury is computed at 2026 limits, because the payment is being made more than two years after the injury. Carriers routinely pay retroactive temporary disability at the date-of-injury rate. On a denied-then-accepted claim with two years of back benefits at the cap, the difference approaches $48,000.

Three honest limits. The statute reaches temporary total disability only — not temporary partial, not permanent disability, not life pension, not death benefits. It is computed payment by payment. And defense practitioners argue it applies only to benefit periods falling after the two-year mark rather than to retroactive payments made after it. Hofmeister points the other way and is published Court of Appeal authority, but we have not found a modern published decision squarely resolving the retroactive lump-sum question.

Like § 4650(a), § 4661.5 is self-executing — no application is required, and a failure to apply it produces a short payment exposed to the § 4650(d) 10% and to § 5814.

If you have been receiving temporary disability for more than two years, or you are about to receive a retroactive lump sum on a delayed claim, this is worth checking before you cash anything.

Modified duty and partial disability

If your doctor releases you to modified work and your employer provides it at reduced earnings, you receive temporary partial disability — two-thirds of the difference between what you were earning and what you are earning now, subject to the same weekly maximum.

Weeks of temporary partial disability count against the same 104-week cap.

Public safety: Labor Code § 4850

Qualifying public safety personnel — including police officers, firefighters, sheriff's deputies, and certain other classifications — receive up to one year of full salary in place of temporary disability, under § 4850. (Workers' compensation benefits are excluded from income under IRC § 104(a)(1) and § 4850 pay is generally treated the same way, but the statute itself is silent on tax — confirm with a tax professional.) It is a materially better benefit than two-thirds of wages up to a cap, and eligibility turns on the specific employer and classification.

While you wait: EDD

If your claim is denied or delayed, apply for EDD State Disability Insurance. You can generally collect it while the comp claim is disputed. If you later win, EDD asserts a lien and is reimbursed from your recovery — so it is a bridge, not extra money. But it is income now.

One consequence worth knowing: where you were on SDI during a denied period and the carrier later reimburses EDD, those weeks generally count toward the 104-week cap — but only to the extent the carrier proves it reimbursed EDD.

Frequently asked questions

What people actually ask about the checks

• How much do I get paid while I'm off work?including the two things adjusters routinely leave out of the earnings figure
• My benefits are being reduced.
• My workers' comp check stopped.
• Do I have to use my sick time?
• I can't afford to wait.