Every scheduled loss of use award is one multiplication.

What scheduled loss of use means, and what it pays

In most states a scheduled loss of use award is the most predictable money in workers' compensation, because it is not a judgment about you — it is a multiplication. A few states skip the multiplication and publish a flat dollar figure for each body part, which is simpler still. Most states publish a statutory schedule: a plain list of body parts, each carrying a fixed number of weeks of benefits. An arm is 312 weeks in New York, 410 in Pennsylvania, 225 in Ohio and in Georgia, 222 in Alabama. If a doctor finds you have permanently lost some of the use of a listed part, you are paid that percentage of the listed weeks at your workers' compensation weekly rate.

In most states you are paid it whether or not you went back to work, and whether or not you lost a single dollar of wages. That is the whole point of the schedule. It compensates the loss of the body part itself, not the paycheck.

Three things follow, and they are where every argument about these awards happens.

First, the schedule does not usually cover the back, the neck, the spine, the head or psychiatric injury. Those get routed into a different track — whole-person impairment or lost earning capacity — and three states are exceptions that put the back on the list anyway. Second, whether the award sits on top of the checks you already received or comes out of them genuinely differs by state, and nobody warns you which kind of state you are in. Third, the percentage the doctor writes is the only truly contested input, so it is where the money actually moves.

The formula: weeks × your percentage × your weekly rate

Write it once and you can check any offer you are ever given:

scheduled weeks × the loss-of-use percentage × your weekly compensation rate = the award.

The New York Workers' Compensation Board publishes that formula in its own words — "maximum weeks × loss percentage × (average weekly wage × 2/3)" — along with a worked example: "A worker loses 25% of the use of her arm due to a work-related injury and her average weekly wage (AWW) is $900. 312 × 25% = 78 weeks. $900 × 2/3 = $600 weekly. 78 × $600 = $46,800." That is a state agency's arithmetic, not an estimate.

Worked once: a hand in New York. New York values a hand at 244 weeks under Workers' Comp. Law § 15(3). Say the rating comes back at 30% schedule loss of use and your average weekly wage was $1,050.

• 244 weeks × 30% = 73.2 weeks.
• $1,050 × 2/3 = $700.00 a week.
• Check the ceiling: for an accident dated between 1 July 2026 and 30 June 2027, New York's maximum weekly benefit is $1,281.50, so the full $700 applies. The average weekly wage article covers how that base figure is built.
• 73.2 × $700.00 = $51,240.00.

Then New York does something most states do not. Its Board states plainly: "Any temporary benefits you have already been paid will be deducted from your SLU award." If this worker collected 12 weeks of temporary total at $700, that $8,400 comes off, leaving a balance of $42,840 — though the award itself is still $51,240. If the employer kept paying wages while she was out, the employer can be reimbursed out of the same pot.

Worked twice: an arm in Georgia, where nothing is deducted. Georgia values an arm at 225 weeks under O.C.G.A. § 34-9-263. Take a 20% permanent partial impairment and an average weekly wage of $900.

• 225 weeks × 20% = 45 weeks.
• $900 × 2/3 = $600.00, under Georgia's $800 weekly maximum, which has been in force for dates of injury on or after 1 July 2023.
• 45 × $600.00 = $27,000.00.

The Georgia State Board's own employee handbook states the formula in exactly those terms — weeks assigned by the statute, multiplied by the percentage rating, multiplied by the temporary total disability rate. Georgia does not subtract the temporary checks already paid. Permanent partial is a separate category that starts after income benefits end.

Same injury severity, same wage bracket, two different countries as far as the accounting goes. That difference gets its own section below.

The permanent partial disability body part chart, state by state

Below is the schedule as the statutes actually print it. Every figure is weeks of benefits for a total loss, or total loss of use, of that member. For a partial loss you multiply by the percentage. Blank cells are not gaps in the law — they are places where the official source could not be read cleanly, and the footnote under the table says which and why. On a page about money, a filled-in guess is the worst error available.

Why three cells are blank. New Jersey's official 2026 Schedule of Disabilities prints two week values for the hand and two for the foot, split at roughly a 25% disability threshold, and the condition separating them could not be read reliably from the state's PDF — so no single number is publishable here. New Jersey publishes the full schedule itself at nj.gov, and its other figures above are clean. The Illinois one-ear hearing figure could be traced only to a private code republisher, not to the legislature or the Illinois Workers' Compensation Commission handbook, which prints the both-ears figure of 215 weeks but not the single ear. Ask the Commission. Twenty-four states are not in either table — twenty-three whose statutes were not reached in this pass, and Michigan, whose schedule the state's own sources would not yield. A schedule invented from memory is worse than no schedule. Your state's agency publishes its own. Dates matter on every dollar figure here. Maxima move on 1 July in Georgia and New York, on 1 January in Ohio, on 1 October in Massachusetts; Washington and New Jersey reissue their whole schedules annually. Compare two of them side by side with the state comparison tool.

The same arm is worth wildly different money depending on which side of a state line you were standing on. Total loss of an arm runs from 500 weeks in Wisconsin down through 410 in Pennsylvania, 330 in New Jersey, 312 in New York, 250 in Iowa, 240 in North Carolina, 225 in Ohio and Georgia, 222 in Alabama and 220 in South Carolina, to 200 in Virginia. Arizona pays it in months. Washington pays it in flat dollars. There is no national number for an arm, and any page that offers you one has invented it.

Some states do not count in weeks at all, and the unit changes the whole conversation.

Washington shows what a schedule looks like with the wage variable removed. An index finger amputated at the knuckle is $35,684.88 for an injury dated in that window. Not 70% of anything, not a percentage of your pay — a published figure. Because the table is inflation-adjusted every 1 July, your date of injury picks the table, not the date you settle. For a non-amputation loss, RCW 51.32.080 pays a proportion of total bodily impairment, $264,332.13 for the same window.

Minnesota shows the whole-body approach with clean arithmetic. An 8% whole-body rating falls into the 5.5-to-under-10.5% band, which carries $121,800. The award is 8% × $121,800 = $9,744.00. Body-part detail lives in the library — hand injuries, knee injuries, shoulder injuries, eye injuries and hearing loss each have their own page.

Four of the states in this chart have no body-part schedule

Texas, Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee publish no list of body parts at all. They rate the whole body instead, so your hand injury becomes a whole-person percentage and that percentage drives the money. Minnesota belongs in the same family — it has no body-part schedule either, and pays a whole-body rating out of the dollar table shown above. Your own state's absence from these tables says nothing either way, because 24 states are not in them.

Texas is the simplest. The Division of Workers' Compensation states it in one line: "Three weeks of IIBs are paid for each percentage point of impairment," starting the day after maximum medical improvement. A 12% whole-body rating is 36 weeks of impairment income benefits, paid at 70% of your average weekly wage. There is a ceiling — 70% of the state average weekly wage — and TDI publishes the current figure rather than freezing it in an article.

Kentucky multiplies three things together. Take a $900 average weekly wage and a 12% rating: 66 2/3% of $900 is $600.00, times the 0.12 rating is $72.00 a week, times the 1.00 factor its band carries, payable for 425 weeks — $30,600. The band edges matter more than the rating does. At 20% the factor is still 1.00, so the same worker draws $120.00 a week across 425 weeks — $51,000. At 22% the factor jumps to 1.15, the weekly figure becomes $151.80, and the same 425 weeks pay $64,515. Two points of rating, $13,515.

Tennessee runs 450 weeks × rating × rate. The same worker at $900 and 12% gets 54 weeks × $600.00 = $32,400. If that worker does not go back to work, the statute multiplies the original award by 1.35 — $43,740 — with further multipliers stacked on for no diploma, for age over 40, and for a high-unemployment county.

Florida tiers the weeks instead. Ratings of 1–10% earn 2 weeks per point, 11–15% earn 3 weeks, 16–20% earn 4, and anything at 21% or above earns 6. The statute is Fla. Stat. § 440.15 and it is worth reading yourself, because Florida also has the country's sharpest return-to-work penalty, covered below.

On top, or taken out? The offset question splits the country.

This is the single most misunderstood point in the subject, and most pages get it wrong because they generalise from one state. Here is the plain version: in New York the schedule award is a pot your earlier checks are drawn out of. In Ohio and Pennsylvania it is a second pot.

Ohio's statute could not be clearer. R.C. 4123.57(C) says compensation for partial impairment "is in addition to the compensation paid the employee pursuant to section 4123.56" — the temporary total section. You keep the weekly checks you already received and you get the scheduled award as well. New York's Board says the opposite in its own worker guidance: "Temporary benefits that have been paid are deducted from the total SLU award."

The "in addition" states, with the statutory words: Wisconsin — "indemnity shall be paid for the healing period, and in addition, for the period specified." North Carolina — compensation "shall be paid for disability during the healing period and in addition the disability shall be deemed to continue for the period specified," though North Carolina then makes the scheduled payment "in lieu of all other compensation, including disfigurement." Pennsylvania pays the scheduled weeks plus a statutory healing period on top — 20 weeks for a hand, forearm or arm, 25 for a foot, lower leg or leg, 10 for an eye, 10 for hearing. Massachusetts — "In addition to all other compensation to the employee shall be paid the sums hereafter designated." Federal employees are in the same camp: 5 U.S.C. § 8107 pays the schedule award "in addition to compensation for temporary total or temporary partial disability."

The other camp. New York deducts, and its Board also warns that an employer who kept paying your wages while you were out can be reimbursed from the same award. Minnesota makes permanent partial payable on the cessation of temporary total, and it "is not payable while temporary total compensation is being paid." Texas and Florida are sequential by design — impairment benefits start the day after maximum medical improvement or when temporary benefits expire.

One more Ohio wrinkle worth knowing, because workers get routed into the wrong subsection. Division (B) is the schedule for a loss or a total loss of use. A percentage of permanent partial impairment that is not a total loss of use is generally paid under division (A) instead — 66 2/3% of your average weekly wage, capped at a third of the statewide average, applied to your disability percentage of 200 weeks. Division (A) also carries a waiting rule rather than a deadline: an application may be filed no earlier than 26 weeks after the last temporary payment, or 26 weeks after the injury if no temporary total was paid.

You usually get paid even if you went back to full duty at full pay

The adjuster says the claim is closed because you are back at work. In most schedule states that statement is simply wrong, and you do not need a lawyer to find out — you need the government's own words.

Georgia's State Board writes in its employee handbook that permanent partial disability benefits "would be paid to you regardless of your wage rate or total income." New York's Court of Appeals said the same thing in Matter of Landgrebe v. County of Westchester in 1982: the amount of a schedule award, "though independent of the time an employee actually loses from work, is fixed at a statutorily prescribed number of weeks," and "the payment is not analogous to the payment of weekly compensation for temporary disability."

Iowa says it for the unscheduled category too. Under Iowa Code § 85.34(2), where an employee "returns to work or is offered work for which the employee receives or would receive the same or greater salary," compensation is based "only upon the employee's functional impairment resulting from the injury, and not in relation to the employee's earning capacity." Arizona pays scheduled losses at a flat percentage of the average monthly wage — 55% for a total loss, 50% for a partial one — with no earnings test at all; the earnings test appears only in the subsection covering unscheduled injuries.

Now the honest counterexamples, because the rule is not universal.

So the accurate sentence is this. In most schedule states the award is yours regardless of what you earn afterwards. In Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee your return-to-work status is written into the formula. What that means for your weekly checks in the meantime is covered in the return-to-work guide.

Why your back isn't on the chart — and the three states where it is

Almost every source will tell you the back is never scheduled. Almost is doing real work in that sentence.

The general rule holds. Most states route the back, the neck, the spine, the head and psychiatric conditions out of the schedule and into a whole-person or lost-earning-capacity track. Colorado's Division puts it in plain language: scheduled impairment covers "loss of function to your toes, feet, legs, fingers, hands, arms, eyes, vision or hearing," while "spine, lungs, or mental function" produce a non-scheduled whole-person impairment. New York sends spine, back, neck and psychiatric conditions to a separate set of non-schedule guidelines.

Then there are the exceptions, and they carry large numbers.

Connecticut is the outlier that surprises even experienced adjusters. It schedules organs. A liver is 347 weeks on a published list, in a system everyone else handles through whole-person impairment.

Where the schedule runs out, states fall back on a whole-person figure, and those numbers are worth knowing because your rating gets multiplied against them: Illinois and Iowa use 500 weeks for the person as a whole, Maryland makes other cases proportionate to 500 weeks, Missouri uses 400, Tennessee 450, Georgia 300 for the body as a whole, Indiana 100 degrees, and Kentucky 425 or 520 weeks depending on the size of the rating. Specific injuries are covered in back injuries and neck injuries.

The percentage is the whole ballgame, and the guide edition sets it

The weeks are fixed by statute and the rate is arithmetic. The only genuinely contested number is the percentage — and which impairment guide your state mandates changes that percentage before anyone argues about it.

Editions are not on this list for every state, and they are not guessed here. If yours is missing, your agency publishes it — ask before the examination rather than after.

The sequence is the same everywhere a schedule exists, and it is worth knowing which step you are on.

1. 1

   Treatment runs its course

   Nothing on the schedule can be computed while your condition is still changing.

2. 2

   Maximum medical improvement

   Your doctor declares the condition as good as it is going to get. New York's Board says a loss-of-use evaluation "should only be performed after the claimant has reached MMI," and that in non-surgical cases MMI "cannot be determined prior to six months from the date of injury."

3. 3

   A physician measures the loss

   Range of motion, strength, sensation, and whatever else the mandated guide requires. This produces the percentage.

4. 4

   The award is computed

   Weeks × percentage × rate. Nobody has discretion at this step, which is why you can check it yourself.

5. 5

   It is paid weekly, or commuted

   New York's § 15(3) makes schedule awards "fully payable in one lump sum upon the request of the injured employee." Colorado allows up to $10,000 of a medical impairment award to be taken as a lump sum on written request.

Partial loss is proportionate — and the fractions are in the statute

You do not negotiate the fractions. They are printed.

• Ohio: the loss of the third, or distal, phalange of any finger "is considered equal to the loss of one-third of the finger." Ankylosis — total stiffness — and contractures are compensated the same as an actual loss.
• Maryland: losing more than one phalanx of a digit is paid as the entire digit; losing the first phalanx only is paid at 50%.
• Alabama: the first phalanx is half the digit; two or more phalanges is the whole digit.
• New York: awards across several digits "may be proportioned to the loss of use of the hand or foot occasioned thereby but shall not exceed the compensation for loss of a hand or foot." Lose enough of them and the award is proportioned to the hand instead, and capped there.

A total loss of a small part can pay less than a small loss of a big one. Workers assume the reverse, and it costs them. In New York a total loss of the fourth finger is 15 weeks. A 10% loss of use of the arm is 312 × 0.10 = 31.2 weeks — more than double, for an injury that sounds far less serious. The same arithmetic holds in every weeks-based state.

A handful of small mechanical rules move real money, and none of them are announced to you.

Federal civilian employees and dock workers should note one thing: you are on New York's numbers. 5 U.S.C. § 8107 and 33 U.S.C. § 908(c) both use arm 312, leg 288, hand 244, foot 205, eye 160, thumb 75, first finger 46, second 30, third 25, fourth 15, great toe 38 and other toe 16 — identical to New York's list. They part company on hearing, at 52 weeks for one ear and 200 for both, and on disfigurement. The federal act also has a catch-all clause paying "proper and equitable compensation not to exceed 312 weeks' compensation for each organ."

What the award does after it lands

Three side effects, none of which the paperwork explains.

It is not taxable. 26 U.S.C. § 104(a)(1) excludes from gross income "amounts received under workmen's compensation acts as compensation for personal injuries or sickness." The only carve-out is for amounts attributable to medical-expense deductions you already took in a prior year. More detail in is workers' comp taxable.

It can cut your Social Security disability check. The Social Security Administration states that where you receive workers' compensation or other public disability benefits together with SSDI, "the total amount of these benefits cannot exceed 80% of your average current earnings before you had a disability," and the excess is deducted from the Social Security benefit until full retirement age. A lump sum counts. SSA asks you to "let us know right away if you receive a lump-sum disability payment." How a settlement document prorates that lump sum over your lifetime is drafting work with real money in it.

Medicare may want a set-aside. CMS reviews a proposed Workers' Compensation Medicare Set-Aside where the claimant is a Medicare beneficiary and the total settlement exceeds $25,000, or where there is a reasonable expectation of Medicare enrollment within 30 months and the total settlement exceeds $250,000. CMS is explicit that its review is voluntary: "There are no statutory or regulatory provisions requiring that you submit a WCMSA amount proposal to CMS for review." The Medicare set-aside article covers the mechanics, and before you sign covers what closing future medical actually gives up.

There are situations where the opposite is true, and they are recognisable.

What a scheduled award becomes inside a full settlement — including future medical, which is a separate question entirely — is covered in the settlement chart. Anyone comparing offers should read that alongside this page, because a workers' comp settlement for a body part and the statutory award for that body part are not the same thing.

Frequently asked questions

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Terms used here are defined in the glossary. More on the permanent side in settlement questions; new to a claim? Start with the first 24 hours guide.