If you permanently injured an arm, leg, hand, foot, finger, toe, eye or ear on the job in New York, your case may end with a Schedule Loss of Use award — a lump sum based on how much use of that body part you permanently lost.
The number is not negotiable in the way a personal injury settlement is. It comes out of a formula set by state law. But two of the three inputs to that formula are regularly gotten wrong, and the difference is usually thousands of dollars.
What a Schedule Loss of Use award actually is
The Workers’ Compensation Board describes an SLU award as a cash benefit that pays you for the loss of wage-earning capacity resulting from a permanent functional impairment of a body part. That phrasing matters: it is not damages for pain and suffering the way a personal injury verdict is, and it is not payment for time you missed. It is paid because you permanently lost some function in a body part the law treats as scheduled. (Pain does still count in one respect — where it limits how the body part functions, the impairment guidelines take that into account when the percentage is set.)
Because of that, you can receive an SLU award even if you went back to your old job at your old pay. Returning to work does not disqualify you. Many injured workers assume it does and never pursue the award.
Which body parts qualify — and which do not
| Body part | Weeks | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Arm | 312 | § 15(3)(a) | |
| Leg | 288 | § 15(3)(b) | |
| Hand | 244 | § 15(3)(c) | |
| Foot | 205 | § 15(3)(d) | |
| Eye | 160 | § 15(3)(e) | |
| Hearing, both ears | 150 | § 15(3)(m) | |
| Thumb | 75 | § 15(3)(f) |
| Body part | Weeks | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Hearing, one ear | 60 | § 15(3)(m) | |
| Index finger | 46 | § 15(3)(g) | |
| Great toe | 38 | § 15(3)(h) | |
| Second finger | 30 | § 15(3)(i) | |
| Third finger | 25 | § 15(3)(j) | |
| Other toe | 16 | § 15(3)(k) | |
| Fourth finger | 15 | § 15(3)(l) |
New York splits permanent injuries into two tracks, and which track you are on decides everything about how your case ends.
Scheduled: arms, legs, hands, feet, fingers, toes, eyes, ears
Two of these come up often enough to have pages of their own, because the body part you injured is not the member you are paid for: a shoulder is valued as the arm and a knee as the leg. Each has its own measurement rules and its own normal healing period.
These are covered by Workers’ Compensation Law § 15(3), which sets a fixed number of weeks for each one. Read the table carefully: these are the weeks for a TOTAL, 100% loss of that body part. Almost nobody receives the full figure — your award is this number multiplied by your loss percentage.
| Body part | Weeks at 100% loss |
|---|---|
| Arm (includes the shoulder) | 312 |
| Leg (includes the hip) | 288 |
| Hand | 244 |
| Foot | 205 |
| Eye | 160 |
| Thumb | 75 |
| First finger (index) | 46 |
| Big toe | 38 |
| Second finger | 30 |
| Third finger | 25 |
| Fourth finger | 15 |
| Other toe | 16 |
Two points that surprise people: the shoulder is evaluated as part of the arm, and the hip as part of the leg. Under the Board’s 2018 impairment guidelines, a shoulder finding is expressed as a percentage loss of use of the arm, and a hip finding as a percentage loss of use of the leg. There is no separate “shoulder schedule” with its own week count — a serious rotator cuff injury is an arm claim.
The table is not the whole schedule, and three rules sit on top of it. You do not have to lose the limb: permanent total loss of the use of a member is compensated the same as loss of the member itself. For vision, losing binocular vision, or 80 percent or more of the vision in one eye, counts as loss of the eye. And facial disfigurement is not measured in weeks at all — the Board may award up to $20,000 for serious permanent disfigurement of the face, head or neck, including scarring that runs from the face down into the neck above the collarbone. That award is separate, and it can exist alongside a schedule award for a limb injured in the same accident. There are also separate provisions for the loss of more than one finger or toe.
Not scheduled: back, neck, spine, head, internal organs
This is why a nurse or nursing home aide with a back injury is on a different track from a worker with a damaged shoulder or knee, even where the injury happened the same way.
The back, neck and spine are not scheduled members. A permanent spinal injury on its own does not produce an SLU award. Those claims fall under § 15(3)(w) — “all other cases” — and are handled as a non-schedule permanent partial disability, based on your lost wage-earning capacity rather than a fixed number of weeks. It is a different process, with a different timeline and a different result.
One important qualification. If your accident injured both a scheduled member and your spine — a shoulder and a lower back, say — a back injury does not cancel out the claim for the arm or leg. The Appellate Division has held, over the Board’s resistance, that you can receive a schedule loss of use award for the limb and a non-schedule classification for the spine out of the same accident. What changes is the timing and the accounting, not your entitlement. Here is how a schedule award and a classification work together in one claim.
Want the number for your own claim? Our New York schedule loss of use calculator applies the statutory formula — weeks for the member, your percentage, your weekly rate capped at the maximum for your date of accident — and subtracts the benefits already paid.
How the award is calculated
Three numbers, multiplied together:
- The weeks for that body part at 100% loss, from the table above.
- Your loss percentage — how much use you permanently lost.
- Two-thirds of your average weekly wage (AWW) — subject to the statutory maximum and minimum weekly rate in force on your date of injury.
Weeks × loss percentage × (2/3 of AWW, capped) = the gross award
It is easier to see in weeks than in dollars. The arm is 312 weeks at a total loss. A 25% loss of use of the arm is therefore 78 weeks of benefits — and those 78 weeks are paid at two-thirds of your average weekly wage, up to the cap for your date of injury.
Run the same arithmetic on your own body part and percentage and you will see why the percentage is worth arguing about. On a 312-week arm, a single percentage point is just over three weeks of benefits.
What the formula produces is a gross figure, not the check. Temporary benefits already paid on the claim, wages your employer was reimbursed for, and the approved attorney’s fee all come out of it before anything reaches you. See the deductions section below.
We do not publish sample dollar figures, because the honest answer to “what is mine worth” depends on your wage, your percentage, what you have already been paid and what body part is involved. Any number quoted without those four things is guesswork.
The two-thirds figure is capped. For injuries dated 1 July 2026 through 30 June 2027, the weekly rate maximum is $1,281.50 and the minimum is $384.45. If your actual weekly wages are at or below that minimum, you receive your full wages rather than the minimum figure. These rates change every July, and the ones that govern your claim are the ones in effect on the day you were hurt — not today’s. An injury from 2019 is governed by 2019’s numbers.
Where the loss percentage comes from — and why it is fought over
Of the three inputs, the weeks are fixed by statute and your AWW is a matter of record. The loss percentage is the one that moves, and it is where the money is.
It comes from a medical examination performed under the Workers’ Compensation Guidelines for Determining Impairment, First Edition, which took effect on 1 January 2018 and is incorporated into the regulations at 12 NYCRR 325-1.6. Your treating doctor produces a percentage. The insurance carrier sends you to its own consultant — an independent medical examination — who produces another, almost always lower.
When the two disagree, a Workers’ Compensation Law Judge decides, or the parties agree on a figure in between. On a 312-week arm, every single percentage point is 3.12 weeks of benefits. Ten points is nearly eight months of payments.
That is why the IME matters so much, and why going to one unprepared is expensive.
Your other arm or leg may be the measuring stick
Range of motion is not automatically measured against a textbook “normal.” Under the Board’s rules, the doctor compares your injured arm or leg to the same part on your uninjured side, and that side becomes the baseline. The Guidelines’ normal values, such as 180 degrees for shoulder flexion, are used only when the other side cannot serve as a fair comparison, for example because:
- it was injured before and has its own range-of-motion restrictions, or
- it is not available, such as after an amputation.
In September 2026, the Board corrected the way this comparison is calculated in its Schedule Loss of Use FAQ. Its example: your uninjured shoulder raises forward to 160 degrees and your injured shoulder to 135. The Guidelines value for 135 degrees is a 20% loss, but the stretch from 180 down to 160 was never lost, and that portion, 8.89%, comes off. The result is an 11.11% schedule loss of use of the arm. The Board said its earlier method, which produced about 18%, was wrong.
Two practical points follow. First, measurements of your “good” side matter as much as measurements of the injured one, so make sure both are taken carefully and recorded. Second, if your other arm or leg already had problems from an old injury, arthritis or anything else, tell your doctor. A restricted limb should not be used as the baseline, and using the normal value instead can mean a higher award.
Timing: why your award cannot be made yet
An SLU award cannot be made until you reach maximum medical improvement — the point where your condition has stabilized and further treatment is not expected to improve it. That is also why some injured workers never receive a schedule award at all — if treatment stops before the doctor files the report, permanency is never assessed.
Under the 2018 impairment guidelines, in cases that do not involve surgery or a fracture, MMI cannot be determined earlier than six months from the date of injury unless the parties agree otherwise. Where there has been surgery, MMI is commonly reached around a year from the injury or from the last operation — but that is a typical timeframe, not a rule.
The wait is genuinely frustrating if you want the case finished. But a percentage assigned to a body part that is still changing is almost always lower than the one you would have received by waiting until it settled.
Maximum medical improvement is not a promise
It is worth being clear about what the term does and does not mean. Maximum medical improvement is a finding about where you are now — that treatment has taken you as far as it is going to and the condition has leveled off. It is not a prediction that the body part will stay this way for the rest of your life.
Joints that have been injured and repaired often do get worse with time. Hardware loosens. Arthritis sets into a knee or a shoulder that was operated on years earlier. A fusion changes how the joints around it wear. A worker can be found at maximum medical improvement at 20 percent and genuinely be worse a decade later.
New York accounts for this. Under § 22, the Board may review an award on the ground of a change in conditions, and on that review it can increase the compensation previously awarded. A schedule award is not automatically the last word on the injury. If the body part deteriorates in a way that supports a higher percentage, the case can be brought back and the percentage revisited, with credit given for what was already paid.
Two things have to be true for that to work, and both of them are within your control now.
First, there are outer time limits. Under § 123, no award can be made where more than eighteen years have passed since the injury and more than eight years have passed since the last payment of compensation. Both of those have to have run before the door closes, so the clock is long — but it is not unlimited, and it is measured in part from the last payment, which is one practical reason not to let a case go entirely quiet.
Second, a reopening lives or dies on medical proof. You are not asking the Board to take your word that the shoulder is worse. You are asking it to compare a documented condition then against a documented condition now, which means the worsening has to be examined, recorded and measured by a physician. Keep treating when you need to, and keep the records.
What gets deducted from your award
The gross figure from the formula is not what arrives. Taken out of it:
- Any temporary disability benefits already paid to you on the claim.
- Any wages your employer continued to pay that the carrier reimbursed.
- Your attorney’s fee. In a workers’ compensation case the fee is approved by the Board and comes out of the award rather than out of your pocket — generally fifteen percent of the new money awarded. You are never billed up front and you owe nothing if there is no recovery.
What remains is paid out, in regular payments or as a lump sum. This is why two workers with identical injuries and identical wages can receive very different checks — one was out of work for eight months and one was not.
The rule runs the other way too, and this one is missed far more often than it is used. If your period of temporary total disability lasted longer than the law allows for that body part, the excess weeks are added on to your schedule award. The thresholds are set by statute:
| Body part | Healing period allowed |
|---|---|
| Leg | 40 weeks |
| Arm | 32 weeks |
| Hand | 32 weeks |
| Foot | 32 weeks |
| Ear | 25 weeks |
| Thumb | 24 weeks |
| Eye | 20 weeks |
| First finger | 18 weeks |
| Great toe, second finger | 12 weeks |
| Third finger, fourth finger, other toe | 8 weeks |
A worker totally disabled for 50 weeks after shoulder surgery has exceeded the 32 weeks allowed for an arm by 18 weeks, and those 18 weeks are added to his 312. This is the protracted healing period, under § 15(4-a). Most recoveries never reach the threshold, which is why it rarely comes up — but a long, difficult recovery is exactly the case where it applies, and exactly the case where nobody thinks to raise it.
If more than one accident contributed to the same body part, the division between them has its own rules. See apportionment between two workers’ compensation claims.
Schedule Loss of Use versus a Section 32 settlement
These are different things and they are often confused.
An SLU award is a calculation. You have a permanent loss, the formula produces a figure, and your medical treatment for the injury generally remains open.
A Section 32 settlement is a negotiated agreement resolving the claim for an agreed sum. It is entirely optional, the Board must approve it, and once final it generally cannot be reopened unless every party agrees. Importantly, it does not have to close your medical care: you can settle the indemnity (lost wage) portion alone and keep your medical benefits open, or settle both. Which one is on the table is a question worth asking explicitly.
If you do sign one, you have 10 calendar days from the date the agreement is submitted to the Board to change your mind and withdraw.
Sometimes a carrier will offer a Section 32 settlement to resolve a claim that would otherwise produce an SLU award. Whether that is a good trade depends on the numbers and on how much future treatment you are likely to need.
Four mistakes that cost injured workers money
1. Assuming that going back to work ends the claim
It does not. The award is for permanent loss of function, not lost time.
2. Treating the IME as a formality
It is an examination arranged by the party that pays your award. What you say and do in that room becomes a percentage.
3. Accepting the first percentage offered
The carrier’s number is a position, not a verdict. On a 312-week arm, a few points is real money.
All of this assumes your claim is established. If the carrier controverted it, or stopped paying, that fight comes first — see what to do when your workers’ comp claim is denied.
4. Pushing for a finding of permanency too early
Before MMI, the number is provisional and usually low.
To estimate what a schedule loss of use percentage is worth, try our workers’ comp benefits calculator.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to receive a Schedule Loss of Use award?
It depends on when you reach MMI — not before six months from the injury in non-surgical cases, and commonly around a year where there has been surgery — and on whether the loss percentage is disputed. An agreed percentage can be resolved at a hearing relatively quickly; a contested one takes longer.
Can I get an SLU award and still receive medical treatment?
Generally yes. An SLU award addresses permanent loss of function; it does not by itself close your right to causally related medical care. A Section 32 settlement can close future medical treatment — but only if it is written that way, and indemnity-only settlements that leave medical open are permitted.
Do I get an SLU award for my back?
Not for the back itself — the back, neck and spine are not scheduled members, and those permanent injuries are handled as non-schedule permanent partial disability under § 15(3)(w). But if the same accident also injured an arm, leg, hand or foot, do not assume the spine injury wipes out a schedule award for the limb. How those combine is contested in New York and worth asking about.
What if I had a prior injury to the same body part?
A prior award on the same member is usually credited against the new one, and apportionment between the two injuries may be argued. This is one of the areas where the arithmetic gets complicated and where advice is worth having.
Is the award taxable?
Workers’ compensation benefits are generally not subject to federal or New York State income tax. There is a real exception: if you also receive Social Security disability and your workers’ compensation reduces that benefit, the offset portion can be taxable. If you are on SSD, speak to a tax professional before you assume the award is tax-free.
Talk to a New York workers’ compensation attorney
If you have been given a loss percentage, or you are scheduled for an independent medical examination, that is the moment the value of your claim is being decided. It is worth a conversation before the number is set.
The Law Offices of Frank J. Dito, Jr. represents injured workers throughout Staten Island and Brooklyn. Consultations are free. If we don’t recover money for you, we don’t get paid.
Call 718.701.2776 or 800.310.5520
1610 Richmond Road #200, Staten Island, NY 10304
Hearing is scheduled too, at 60 weeks for one ear and 150 for both, but the claim reaches the schedule by a different route — see occupational hearing loss claims.
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