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Estimate the workers' comp benefits you may be owed under Arizona law — TTD, TPD, PPD, PTD, and death benefits — in about 3 minutes.
USE THE CALCULATOR ↓Free informational tool. Not legal advice. Hablamos español.
This calculator provides an informational estimate of Arizona workers' compensation benefits only. It is not legal advice, does not create an attorney-client relationship, and is not a guarantee of any benefit amount. Actual benefits are determined by the Industrial Commission of Arizona (ICA), your employer's insurance carrier, and the specific facts of your claim.
Almost every number in an Arizona workers' compensation case traces back to one figure: your Average Monthly Wage, or AMW. The Industrial Commission of Arizona establishes the AMW based on your earnings in the period before the injury, and Arizona caps it at a maximum monthly amount that the Commission resets each January. The cap in effect is the one for the year of your injury, not the year you settle, which is why two workers with identical wages and identical injuries can end up with different benefit rates.
The AMW is also the figure carriers most often get wrong. Overtime, shift differentials, tips, bonuses, and concurrent employment can all belong in the calculation, and leaving them out quietly lowers every check that follows. If you believe your wage base is understated, that is a dispute worth raising early — an ICA award setting the AMW becomes difficult to reopen once it is final. Our page on workers' compensation claims in Arizona explains how we audit a wage base, and our post on lost wages and loss of earning capacity covers the proof involved.
Temporary benefits cover the recovery period. Temporary total disability is paid while a doctor takes you off work entirely; temporary partial disability applies when you return on light duty or reduced hours and earn less than you did before. Both are paid at roughly two-thirds of the applicable wage figure, subject to the annual cap, and both stop when your condition becomes medically stationary — the point at which further treatment is not expected to improve the underlying condition.
What happens next depends on whether any permanent impairment remains. If a rating physician finds none, the claim closes with no further disability award. If a rating is assigned, the claim moves into permanent partial or, in the most serious cases, permanent total disability. Permanent total benefits are paid at the same two-thirds rate for life, subject to the cap, and carriers contest them aggressively because the exposure is large.
A.R.S. § 23-1044 splits permanent partial disability into two very different tracks, and which track your injury falls on often matters more than the size of the impairment rating itself.
Scheduled injuries involve specific extremities and senses — an arm, a hand, a finger, a leg, a foot, an eye, or hearing. The statute assigns each a set number of months of compensation, and the award is calculated mechanically from the body part and the percentage of impairment. Because the schedule is fixed, your actual job, your wages after the injury, and whether you can still perform your trade generally do not change the award.
Unscheduled injuries cover everything else: the back, neck, shoulder in many presentations, hips, internal organs, head injuries, and psychiatric conditions. These are compensated based on loss of earning capacity — the difference between what you could earn before the injury and what you can reasonably earn now, given your restrictions, education, age, and work history. Loss of earning capacity awards typically continue monthly rather than arriving as a lump figure, and they can be reopened or rearranged if your earning capacity changes.
One recurring wrinkle: a scheduled injury can be treated as unscheduled when a worker has a prior impairment to another scheduled body part, which can substantially increase the value of the claim. This is a technical determination and one of the most common places a claim is undervalued.
The calculator applies Arizona's published benefit formulas to the wage and disability information you enter. It is useful for sanity-checking the checks you are already receiving, for understanding the rough scale of a permanent award, and for seeing how a change in your wage base moves every downstream number.
It cannot do several things:
No estimate produced here is binding on the Industrial Commission of Arizona, on your employer, or on the insurance carrier.
Arizona permits the parties to settle a workers' compensation claim by written agreement, and the Industrial Commission must approve it. Approval is not a formality: the Commission reviews whether the terms are fair and whether the worker understands what is being given up. Most settlements close out future indemnity benefits, and many close future medical care as well, which is why the medical component deserves careful pricing before anyone signs. Where Medicare has an interest, that interest has to be considered as part of the deal.
The practical inputs are the strength of the medical evidence, the size and type of the impairment rating, the credibility of the loss-of-earning-capacity evidence, the remaining life expectancy of the medical exposure, and how each side reads the risk of a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge. A settlement is a negotiated resolution of those variables — not the output of any calculator, including this one.
If your injury also involved a party other than your employer, read our workers' compensation page before settling anything. Comp carriers hold a lien against a third-party recovery, and the order in which the two claims resolve can materially change what reaches you.
Arizona law provides four main categories of workers' comp benefits. The right ones for you depend on your injury, your wages, and whether you can return to work.
Arizona workers' comp generally pays 100% of the medical care you need to recover from your work injury — doctor visits, surgery, physical therapy, prescriptions, and travel to appointments. You should not be billed for treatment of an accepted work injury. If you are, that's a sign something is wrong.
While you cannot work (TTD), Arizona pays roughly 66.67% of your Average Monthly Wage, subject to the ICA's annual maximum. If you return at reduced hours or modified duty (TPD), you receive 66.67% of the difference between your pre-injury wage and what you can now earn. There is a 7-day waiting period unless your disability lasts 14+ days, in which case the first week is paid retroactively.
For specific body parts — arm, hand, leg, eye, hearing — Arizona uses a 'scheduled' system: a fixed number of months of payments based on your impairment rating. For back, neck, head, internal, or psychiatric injuries, benefits are 'unscheduled' and based on loss of earning capacity, typically until age 65.
When a work injury prevents any substantial gainful employment, Arizona provides PTD benefits — 66.67% of Average Monthly Wage, for life, subject to the ICA maximum. PTD is hard to obtain and frequently contested by insurance carriers.
If a worker dies from a work-related injury, the surviving spouse and dependents receive a percentage of the worker's Average Monthly Wage. A surviving spouse generally receives 35% (continuing until death or remarriage), with additional amounts for each dependent child until age 18 (longer for students or disabled children). Reasonable burial expenses are also covered.
Workers' comp does not pay for pain and suffering. But if someone other than your employer caused your injury — a defective product, a negligent subcontractor, a driver who hit you on the job, or an unsafe property owner — you may have a separate personal injury claim that recovers the full range of damages workers' comp doesn't pay.
Under A.R.S. § 23-1061, you generally have 1 year from the date of injury (or from when you knew or should have known the injury was work-related) to file a workers' compensation claim with the ICA. Missing this deadline can permanently bar your claim.
Your AMW is the foundation of every wage-replacement benefit. Carriers sometimes calculate AMW too low — leaving out overtime, tips, bonuses, or second jobs you held when injured. If your AMW is wrong, every check you receive will be wrong.
Arizona prohibits retaliation against workers who file legitimate workers' comp claims. Termination, demotion, or harassment because you filed a claim can be the basis for a separate wrongful termination case.
Arizona's TTD and PTD benefit amounts are capped at a maximum monthly figure set by the Industrial Commission of Arizona and adjusted each January. High earners may receive less than 66.67% of their actual wages because of this cap.
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If your work injury also involves a third party — equipment maker, driver, subcontractor — we evaluate the workers' comp claim and the personal injury claim together.
Take 60 seconds to find out whether your benefits are correct, whether you have a third-party claim, and what to do next.
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