Workers’ Comp Settlement Calculator: How Much Could You Get in North Carolina?

North Carolina does not leave injury payouts to guesswork. The Workers’ Compensation Act fixes a percentage, an annual maximum, and a set number of weeks for most permanent injuries, so the arithmetic can be followed on paper. The difficulty is the inputs. Each one can be contested, and a wrong figure carries through every line below it.

Key Takeaways About Using a Workers’ Comp Settlement Calculator

• Your weekly benefit is 66 2/3% of your average weekly wage, capped at the maximum for the year you were hurt rather than the year you settle.
• You generally have 30 days to give your employer written notice and two years to file Form 18 with the North Carolina Industrial Commission (NCIC), the agency that decides comp claims.
• Carriers calculate the average weekly wage themselves, and an understated wage quietly reduces every benefit that flows from it.
• An attorney can test the wage math, the rating and the treatment still to come before any figure is accepted.
• A calculator cannot value what a settlement closes, which is why workers who rely on one alone tend to negotiate against a number that was never complete.

Fixed Rates a North Carolina Calculation Cannot Move

• The statutory minimum weekly benefit is $30.00, a floor unchanged since 1987, and it rises to $50.00 for claims arising on or after July 1, 2027 under Session Law 2026-14. No calculation, however it is done, produces a lawful weekly figure below the floor for your injury date.
• Above that floor sits a ceiling, published each year by the Industrial Commission: $1,446.00 a week for a 2026 injury, $1,380.00 for 2025, $1,330.00 for 2024 and $1,254.00 for 2023. Any two-thirds figure above the cap for that year is paid at the cap instead.
• North Carolina’s recordable injury and illness rate in private industry was 1.9 cases per 100 full-time workers in 2024, against 2.3 nationally, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Carriers work that volume by formula, which is why an offer often arrives before anyone has checked the inputs behind it.

How do you calculate a workers’ comp settlement in North Carolina?

Four steps. Find your average weekly wage, convert it into a weekly compensation rate, add up the weeks of benefits you are owed, then value what remains open. Everything else is negotiation around those four numbers.

Step one: what is your average weekly wage?

Your average weekly wage, abbreviated AWW, is generally your total earnings in that job over the 52 weeks immediately preceding the injury, divided by 52. That definition comes from N.C.G.S. § 97-2(5), part of Chapter 97 of the General Statutes.

Where a straight 52-week average would be unfair to either side, or the worker had not held the job that long, the statute allows other methods.

Earnings means earnings, not base pay. Overtime, shift differentials and certain bonuses belong in the total.

Step two: what is your weekly compensation rate?

Two thirds of the average weekly wage, subject to a ceiling and a floor. The precise figure is 66 2/3%, and the ceiling is the maximum weekly rate for the year of your injury, not the year you settle.

That last point surprises people. The rate locks at the date of injury.

Maximum weekly compensation rate by year of injury

Year of injury	Maximum weekly rate
2026	$1,446.00
2025	$1,380.00
2024	$1,330.00
2023	$1,254.00

The floor is $30.00 per week for injuries before July 1, 2027, and $50.00 for claims arising on or after that date.

Step three: how many weeks of benefits are you owed?

Count the weeks you were unable to work and multiply them by your compensation rate. That is Temporary Total Disability, or TTD, the benefit paid under N.C.G.S. § 97-29 while you cannot work at all.

Two rules adjust the count. No compensation is paid for the first seven calendar days of disability, though medical treatment is still covered. If the disability runs more than 21 days, compensation is allowed from the first date of disability, so the opening week comes back to you. TTD is capped at 500 weeks from the date of first disability.

If you returned to work but at lower earnings, the benefit changes form. Temporary Partial Disability, or TPD, pays 66 2/3% of the difference between your pre-injury and post-injury wage-earning capacity under N.C.G.S. § 97-30. TPD runs for up to 500 weeks, not 300, and that distinction is worth checking against whatever a carrier tells you.

Step four: what does your impairment rating add?

Multiply three numbers: your rating percentage, the scheduled weeks for that body part, and your compensation rate. The schedule sits in N.C.G.S. § 97-31, and it assigns a fixed number of weeks to total loss or loss of use.

A back or spine is 300 weeks. An arm is 240. A hand is 200, and so is a leg. A foot is 144, an eye 120, and a thumb 75. A rating is assigned once you reach maximum medical improvement, or MMI, meaning your condition has stabilized as far as treatment is expected to take it.

This benefit is Permanent Partial Disability, or PPD. The weeks are set by statute. The percentage is a physician’s judgment.

A worked example, start to finish

Here is the whole calculation on one set of facts. Take a Winston-Salem machine operator who averaged $1,040.00 a week over the 52 weeks before the injury, was hurt in 2026, and stayed out of work 30 weeks, well short of the maximum time a worker can stay on workers’ comp. The operator was later rated at 15% of the hand.

Step	Calculation	Result
Average weekly wage	52 weeks of earnings divided by 52	$1,040.00
Weekly compensation rate	$1,040.00 × 66 2/3%	$693.33
Cap check	2026 maximum is $1,446.00, so the cap does not apply	$693.33
Temporary Total Disability	30 weeks × $693.33	$20,799.90
Scheduled weeks for the hand	§ 97-31 total loss of use	200 weeks
Rating converted to weeks	15% × 200 weeks	30 weeks
Permanent Partial Disability	30 weeks × $693.33	$20,799.90
Combined wage and rating benefits	$20,799.90 + $20,799.90	$41,599.80

That total illustrates the formula, not any real claim. It leaves out the value of future medical care being closed, a Medicare Set-Aside where the worker is Medicare-eligible and one is required, any recovery from a negligent third party, and the premium a carrier pays for certainty. Those pieces are covered alongside average workers’ comp settlement amounts in NC.

Why won’t an online workers’ comp calculator give you a real number?

Because the negotiation is not about the weeks you can count. It is about two prices: what keeping medical care open is worth to you, and what closing it is worth to the carrier. A calculator prices neither, and it has no way to know whether the wage figure it was handed is the right one.

What are both sides actually pricing?

The same medical file, from opposite ends. Under N.C.G.S. § 97-25, medical compensation stays open while treatment tends to cure, give relief, or shorten the period of disability, so a carrier settling is buying its way out of an obligation with no end date.

You are selling the injections, therapy, imaging and possible surgery still ahead of you. No statutory table sets that number. It is argued rather than computed, and the settled figure lands between two projections.

How would a calculator know your wage is right?

It would not. It uses whatever gets typed into it, and that figure usually came from the carrier’s payroll math, where overtime gets dropped, a second position with the same employer gets missed, and weeks spent out sick get averaged as though they were normal ones.

The wage sets the rate, and the rate multiplies every week of TTD, TPD and PPD. Our Cary workers’ comp attorneys check that figure against the stubs, much the way challenging an impairment rating starts before the percentage becomes the basis of an award.

The numbers worth gathering before anyone quotes you a figure

Pay stubs covering the 52 weeks before the injury tend to be the most valuable item, particularly where they show overtime and shift differential separately from base pay. The date of injury and the exact dates out of work come next, since those set the week count.

Many claimants also keep the written impairment rating on the physician’s letterhead rather than summarized in a carrier’s letter, along with a list of treatment recommended but not yet completed.

None of that is legal advice. It makes the conversation with an attorney faster and more accurate.

Workers’ Comp Settlement Calculator Questions Answered by Attorneys

Will the insurance company tell me what my claim is worth?

An adjuster will tell you what the carrier is prepared to pay, which is a different thing. The carrier calculates the wage rate and the benefit weeks itself, and an opening figure often covers past benefits without pricing the medical care a settlement would close.

Does it matter that my injury happened in a different year than my settlement?

Yes. The compensation rate locks to the year of injury. A worker hurt in 2023 who settles in 2026 is measured against the 2023 maximum of $1,254.00, not the 2026 maximum of $1,446.00, however long the claim has been open.

I only worked part time. How is my workers’ comp check calculated?

The same percentage applies, so your weekly benefit is 66 2/3% of your actual average weekly wage, subject to the statutory minimum. Part-time earnings produce a smaller check, though the minimum weekly rate sets a floor beneath it.

Do I get paid separately for a scar as well as for the injury?

Often, yes. Disfigurement is separate money under § 97-31. For injuries before July 1, 2027, the law allows up to $20,000 for serious facial or head disfigurement and up to $10,000 for serious bodily disfigurement, alongside any wage and impairment benefits.

The Math Is the Easy Part

Arithmetic is honest. It is also incomplete, because the number being negotiated is not on your worksheet: what open medical coverage would have been worth to you over the next twenty years, and what the carrier will pay to be done with it.

At Whitley Law Firm the first meeting costs nothing, and representation runs on contingency, with no attorney fee charged unless the firm recovers compensation. In a comp case that fee goes to the Industrial Commission for approval under N.C.G.S. § 97-90.

Bring your pay stubs and your rating, and we will go through the numbers with you. Call +1 (800) 785-5000.