Standards
Editorial policy
The rules we hold ourselves to when a number on this site could decide whether an injured worker can pay rent.
Updated
Sourcing: the state's own document or nothing
Every maximum, minimum, percentage, waiting period and duration limit on Workers' Comp Pay Calc comes from a primary source: the state's workers' compensation statute on the legislature's website, a regulation, or the rate notice, bulletin or schedule issued by the state's workers' compensation agency (board, commission, division or court) or, in the monopolistic-fund states, the state fund that acts as the agency of record. Each figure is shown next to a link to that document and the date we last read it.
We do not copy figures from law-firm blogs, insurer marketing pages, or national "all 50 states" charts, even when they are convenient. We use them, at most, to find where an agency hides its notice. Where a state's own source could not be reached or does not publish a figure, the page says so plainly and the calculator asks you for that one figure instead of guessing it.
No estimates dressed up as facts
We never interpolate a missing year, project next year's maximum from a trend, or round a published figure. If a state has not yet announced the rate for a new rate year, injuries dated in that year switch the calculator into an explicit "enter the official maximum" mode. That switch is automatic — it is driven by the dated rate windows in our data — and an automated test fails our build 45 days before any rate window ends without a verified successor, so a lapse is caught before it reaches you.
Verification cadence
- Calendar-year states (January 1 resets): re-checked every November and December as notices are published, and again in the first week of January.
- Fiscal-year states (July 1, and Louisiana's September 1, Texas's October 1 and the other off-cycle states): re-checked in the month before each reset and the week after.
- Statutory formulas (percentages, waiting periods, duration caps): re-read whenever a state's legislative session ends, and at least once a year.
- Each state page shows its own verified date. The site-wide date on this page is the most recent full review.
Corrections
Anyone can report an error through the corrections form; every state page links to it with the page pre-filled. We read every report. When a report checks out against the primary source, we fix the data, re-run the full test suite (which recomputes every state's worked example) and redeploy — our target is within two business days for a wrong figure. A substantive correction updates the page's verified date. We do not quietly edit history: if a figure was wrong, the corrected state page notes what changed and when.
Automation and AI disclosure
This site is built and maintained with substantial help from software, including AI assistants that draft code and prose, fetch and read agency documents, and run the test suites. Automation does not replace verification: every figure in the rate data is tied to a fetched primary-source document, the Michigan and Alaska after-tax formulas are checked against the agencies' own published tables and calculator, and every state's worked example is recomputed by the same engine that runs in your browser. Text is reviewed against the cited documents before publishing. When automation gets something wrong, it is our responsibility, and the corrections process above applies.
Independence
No insurer, employer, law firm or claims administrator pays for placement, reviews our pages or influences what we publish. We carry no ads and no affiliate links. See About for who publishes the site and Sources for every document we rely on.