How Is Wage Loss Calculated For Self-Employed Workers In Minnesota?

If you are injured at work, you may be eligible for a number of different types of workers’ compensation benefits, but two of the most common are medical expense reimbursement and wage loss. Wage loss benefits help to offset the financial burden a worker will incur if they are forced to miss work with an injury and are unable to collect a paycheck for a period of time. These benefits are paid out at two-thirds of a worker’s normal pay rate.

This is typically pretty easy to do for a standard employee who works regular hours. If you work 40-hour weeks, make $24 an hour and missed four weeks while you were recovering from injury, you would be eligible for $2,560 in lost wage benefits (160 hours times two-thirds your normal pay, in this case $16 an hour). But what if you don’t work standard hours and receive a typical paycheck every two weeks because you’re self-employed? How are wage loss benefits calculated for self-employed individuals in Minnesota? We answer that question in today’s blog.

Wage Loss Benefits For Self-Employed Individuals

If you work irregular hours or don’t earn a steady paycheck because you are self-employed, know that you are still eligible for workers’ compensation wage loss benefits, it will just be a little harder to calculate how much you are owed. Before we dive into how that’s calculated, we want to recommend that if you find yourself in this situation, you hire a workers’ compensation lawyer to assist with this process.

There are two main reasons you’ll want a lawyer to assist with your self-employed wage loss claim, and both of them have to do with ensuring you get the most money possible for your claim. For starters, in situations where the injured worker is self-employed and doesn’t earn a standard paycheck, you’ll need to get a bit creative to determine how much you are owed in wage loss benefits. In these situations, your lawyer may look at your average take home pay over the last three months, six months or two fiscal years to determine a rough average of weekly earnings. Looking at a larger set of financial data and prorating it over a shorter period of time can help you come up with a ballpark wage loss figure to ask for in your claim. Getting to an accurate figure is easier with a lawyer by your side.

But perhaps the biggest reason why you’ll want a lawyer is because it’s quite likely that a fair evaluation will garner scrutiny from your workers’ compensation insurance provider. They may look at the financial data they have and suggest a much more modest payout, and unless you have the means and the ability to put together a strong counter to this argument, you may end up settling for a much smaller payday. Not only can a lawyer help determine a fair amount to ask for in a self-employed wage loss claim, but they can back up their reasoning with facts and figures to the insurance company or in court to get you the compensation you rightfully deserve.

Collecting wage loss compensation will be a little more difficult if you’re self-employed, but you can make the process much easier by trusting your case to Dean and the team at Margolis Law Firm. Let us help build you a strong wage loss case and then defend that valuation on your behalf. For help with a wage loss claim or any other aspect of your injury case, reach out to Margolis Law Firm today at (952) 230-2700.