Almost every dollar in a New York workers’ compensation claim is a percentage of one number: your average weekly wage. Get that number wrong at the start and everything downstream is wrong with it — the weekly check, any schedule loss of use award, and whatever the case settles for years later.

It is also the number most likely to be set from incomplete information, because it is usually calculated from whatever payroll records the insurance carrier happens to have.

How the weekly check is built

The arithmetic is two-thirds of your average weekly wage, multiplied by your percentage of disability.

So a worker with an average weekly wage of $1,200 who is found totally disabled receives two-thirds of $1,200, or $800 a week. The same worker found fifty percent disabled receives half of that, $400.

Both halves of that equation get fought over. The percentage of disability comes from the medical evidence. The average weekly wage comes from your earnings — and that is the half most people never think to question.

The ceiling and the floor

New York caps the weekly benefit and also sets a minimum. Both are tied to the statewide average weekly wage and both change every July.

  • Accidents on or after July 1, 2026: maximum $1,281.50 a week, minimum $384.45.
  • Accidents from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026: maximum $1,222.42, minimum $325.00.

Here is the part that surprises people: the rate is fixed by the date of your injury and it does not go up later. If you were hurt in 2019, your maximum is the 2019 maximum, permanently. The Board raises these figures every year and none of those increases reach a claim that was already open. A long-running claim from years ago can be paying at a rate that looks nothing like today’s wages, and that is not an error — it is how the statute works.

Which is another way of saying that the one chance to get the number right is at the beginning.

The second job nobody counts

This is the single most overlooked provision in the statute, and for a lot of people it is worth more than anything else on this page.

If you were working two jobs when you got hurt, the earnings from both can be combined in setting your average weekly wage — not just the earnings from the employer where the accident happened. The law calls this concurrent employment.

Consider someone who drives during the week and works weekends at a restaurant. They get hurt driving. The carrier pulls the payroll from the driving job, sets the wage from that alone, and the restaurant income vanishes from the case — even though the injury stopped both.

There is a condition: the other employment generally has to be covered under New York’s workers’ compensation law too. Not every arrangement qualifies, and it is worth sorting out rather than assuming either way. But it is never applied automatically, because the carrier has no reason to know your second job exists unless somebody tells them.

If you had more than one job, say so at the very first opportunity, and bring the pay records from both.

What counts as wages

The Board puts it plainly: your average weekly wage is based on your gross earnings, not your take-home pay, and it includes overtime. That single sentence disposes of the most common misunderstanding we hear, which is that the wage is built from what landed in the bank account.

Gross means all of it. Base pay, overtime, holiday pay, night and shift differentials, hazard pay, regular bonuses, commissions and tips all belong in the calculation. For transit and other shift-bid work, mutual swaps and run guarantees count too. The statute reaches further than most people expect: it defines wages to include the reasonable value of board, rent, housing, lodging or a similar advantage provided by the employer, and gratuities received in the course of employment from someone other than the employer.

That last item is worth pausing on, because of how the paperwork is built. The employer reports earnings on a form C-240. The payroll columns on that form ask for the gross amount paid including overtime, and then there is a separate question asking whether the worker’s compensation also included board, rent, housing, tips or gratuities. If nobody checks that box, those earnings never enter the figure at all — and the worker whose income depends most on tips is usually the one least able to notice.

The practical lesson is the same for every category on that list. A wage built from base pay alone, on a job where the overtime, the differentials or the tips were a real part of the year’s income, is a wage set too low — and it will stay too low for the life of the claim unless somebody raises it.

How the wage gets calculated

The statute sets out more than one method, and which applies depends on your work pattern over the year before the injury.

The usual approach for someone who worked substantially the whole year in the same job is to take the daily wage and multiply by a fixed annual figure — 260 for a five-day worker, 300 for a six-day worker — then divide by fifty-two. Where that does not fit, the statute allows the earnings of a comparable worker in the same job to be used, and where neither works, a method that reasonably reflects your actual annual earning capacity.

Those alternatives matter more than they sound. They are how the number gets set fairly for people whose work is not a tidy fifty-two weeks: seasonal trades, construction that shuts down in winter, someone who changed jobs partway through the year, someone who started recently.

A worker who started in March and was hurt in September has no full prior year. Dividing a partial year’s earnings by fifty-two produces a number far below what they actually earn, and that is a common way the figure comes out wrong.

Where the figure goes wrong

  • A second job was never mentioned. The most expensive omission available.
  • A short work history got divided by a full year. Common for newer employees and anyone who changed jobs.
  • Seasonal work averaged straight across. A trade that does not run in January should not be valued as though it does.
  • Payroll records that are simply incomplete, or that reflect part of what you were actually paid.
  • Nobody looked. The figure gets proposed, nobody objects, and it becomes the number.

That last one is worth dwelling on. Much of what gets decided in a comp claim is decided because no one contested a proposal inside the window for contesting it. A wage figure that goes unchallenged is a wage figure.

Why it matters more than the weekly check

If the claim were only the weekly payment, an error of fifty dollars a week would be an irritation. It is not only the weekly payment.

The same wage figure drives a schedule loss of use award, which is calculated as a set number of weeks at your rate — so a rate that is too low by fifty dollars shortchanges a 200-week award by ten thousand dollars. It drives the value of any Section 32 settlement, because a settlement is a negotiated version of what the claim would otherwise pay. And where the case gets classified, it drives every week of benefits for years.

One number, compounding quietly in every direction.

Frequently asked questions

My check seems too small. Can the wage be changed now?

Sometimes. It depends on whether the figure was formally established, how it was established, and what has happened in the case since. Bring whatever notices you received and your pay records from the year before the injury, and it can be checked against what the file actually says.

I had two jobs. Does the second one really count?

It can, under the concurrent employment provision, where the other employment is also covered by New York comp. It is not automatic, nobody will raise it for you, and it is one of the few places where a claim’s value can move substantially on a fact you already know.

I was paid partly off the books.

Raise it early and raise it with a lawyer rather than guessing. It complicates proof and it can carry consequences of its own, and how it is handled depends heavily on the specifics. What you should not do is stay quiet and accept a figure you know is wrong without understanding the alternatives.

I only started that job a few months before I got hurt.

Then a straight annual average is probably the wrong method, and the statute has alternatives for exactly this. This is one of the most common places the figure comes out too low.

Will my rate go up as the Board raises the maximum?

No. Your rate is set by the date of your accident and stays there. Increases apply to injuries occurring after they take effect, not to claims already open.

What should I bring?

Pay stubs or W-2s for the year before the injury, from every job you held. Any notice showing the wage figure the carrier proposed. If your hours varied or the work was seasonal, anything showing the real pattern.

Talk to us

If your weekly check looks low, or you were working two jobs when you were hurt, the wage figure is worth checking before the rest of the claim is built on top of it.

Call 718.701.2776 (toll-free: 800.310.5520) or contact us. Consultations are free and there is no fee unless you win.

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Attorney Advertising. This page is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is formed by reading this page or submitting an inquiry. Benefit rates stated here are current as of September 2026 and are keyed to the date of accident.