HOW IS MY AVERAGE WEEKLY WAGE CALCULATED?
The Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act provides the guidelines through which an injured workers’ average weekly wage is to be calculated. The average weekly wage provides the basis off of which your temporary total disability (TTD) benefits or permanent partial disability (PPD) benefits are calculated. The higher that your wages were, the higher these rates will be.
The process of calculating the average weekly wage is as follows:
- The average weekly wage is considered “actual earnings” during the 52 weeks previous to the date of the injury. That number is divided by 52 for the average weekly wage.
- If the employee did not work for 5 or more days (consecutively or spread throughout a period of time) during that 52 week period, then that is deducted and the employees “actual earnings” are divided by the remaining total.
- If the employee just began working during the 52 work period before the accident, the employee’s “actual earnings” are divided by the number of weeks that he or she was earning wages.
In some cases, the employee has been working for so short a time before becoming injured, that the methods used above to calculate benefits are impractical. In this case, it is calculated based off of how much another individual would be paid if they were employed in the same position with the same hours for a full 52 weeks by the same employer.
