How Much Money Will the Ohio BWC Pay Me If I Cannot Work?

When an injured worker is out of work under an Ohio workers’ compensation claim, the worker is entitled to receive weekly compensation benefits to compensate for the lost wages the worker is experiencing by being unable to work. To figure out how much a worker will receive each week, we need to go through a few steps.

Setting the wages

First, the injured worker’s wages need to be set. Once the wages are set, the injured worker can receive compensation based on those rates. There are two rates that are used when a worker is paid through a workers’ compensation claim. These rates are called the Full Weekly Wage (FWW) and the Average Weekly Wage (AWW).

To calculate the FWW, an injured worker has two options. The FWW can be calculated by adding up the 6 weeks of gross pay prior to the date of injury and dividing that by 6. The alternative is to set the FWW based on the worker’s gross wages for the 7 days prior to the injury, less any overtime pay. The FWW can be set at the higher of the two.

The FWW is only used to pay an injured worker’s lost wages for the first 12 weeks the worker is out of work. However, the actual amount of money the worker will receive is not the FWW. The amount the injured worker will receive is 72% of the FWW, called the Full Weekly Wage Rate (FWWR).

After 12 weeks of compensation, an injured worker will start being paid compensation based on the Average Weekly Wage (AWW), rather than the FWW. The AWW is calculated by adding up the gross earnings for the 52 weeks prior to the date of injury and dividing that by the number of weeks worked. The worker will receive 66 2/3% of the AWW as compensation, which is referred to as the Average Weekly Wage Rate (AWWR).

Minimum and maximum rates

Once you determine the FWWR and AWWR, there is one final step to determine how much the worker will get paid. Every year, the Ohio BWC issues a “Compensation Rates” chart that lists the minimum and maximum amount of money a worker can receive through the claim, depending on the particular benefit being paid. Check the current chart on the Ohio BWC website (bwc.ohio.gov) to see whether the minimums and maximums for the year of the injury affect your rates.

With the Compensation Rates chart in hand, follow these rules:

• If the FWW and/or AWW is below the minimum rate for the year of the injury, the injured worker will get paid at the FWW and/or AWW.
• If the FWW and/or AWW is above the minimum rate for the year of the injury, but the FWWR and/or AWWR is below the minimum rate for the year, the worker will be paid at the minimum rate for the year, rather than the FWWR or AWWR.
• If the FWWR and/or AWWR is above the maximum rate for the year, the worker will get paid at the maximum rate.
• If the FWWR and/or AWWR is not below the minimum rate or above the maximum rate, the injured worker will be paid at the FWWR and/or AWWR.

A word of caution

Setting the FWW and AWW in a workers’ compensation claim is one of the most important things to focus on when setting up a claim. Any payments that are made through the claim to the injured worker are based on the FWW and AWW, and these rates will never increase after they are set. It is important that these wages are set as high as possible to make sure the worker receives the most money the worker is entitled to collect.

Caveat

There are situations where the typical calculation of the FWW or AWW produces an unfair result for the worker. For example, if a worker was unemployed for over a year, then returns to work and gets injured on the very first day, the worker will not have the necessary wages to set the FWW or AWW. Likewise, if a worker had only been in the workforce for 6 months when the injury occurred, the injured worker would not have 52 weeks of wages to use for the AWW. These situations require a thoughtful approach to submitting a Wage Statement, and an experienced and qualified workers’ compensation attorney can help figure out the best approach.

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