How CompCharts Sources and Verifies the Data

Where the numbers come from

Two kinds of sources sit behind every page. State sources anchor the rate, schedule, deadline, and agency details for each jurisdiction. Federal sources fill in the cross-state picture: prevalence of injuries by body part, tax treatment of benefits, and the directory of agencies.

State sources

• The workers compensation statute and any schedule of injuries adopted by the state legislature.
• The current maximum and minimum weekly benefit set by the state workers comp board.
• The filing deadlines, the agency address and contact details, and any annual report the board publishes.

Federal sources

• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, for body-part prevalence and industry breakdowns.
• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, for fatal work injury data.
• US Department of Labor, OWCP State Workers Compensation Officials Directory, for the official contact for each state agency.
• IRS Publication 525 and IRC § 104(a)(1) for the federal tax treatment of workers compensation benefits.

Each page on the site cites the specific source URLs behind the figures on that page. The full source index lists the federal datasets and links to each state hub.

When we update

Workers compensation rates change on a state-by-state schedule. Most states adjust the weekly maximum once a year, tied to a calendar-year, July fiscal year, or October fiscal year cycle. We refresh against the source whenever a state publishes a new rate notice, and we check every source on a regular cadence in between so an off-cycle change does not sit unnoticed.

Federal datasets like the BLS surveys release on annual cycles. We pick those up as soon as the new year's tables are published.

How we check each figure

Three things happen to a number before it shows up on a page. First, the source link has to resolve and the figure has to be readable in context — a stale rate notice from five years ago does not get used as a current rate. Second, each figure is range-checked against what is reasonable for that field, so an obvious typo or parsing slip cannot make it to the page. Third, any large year-over-year change in a state's weekly maximum triggers a manual review before the update goes live.

If a source page is unavailable or has changed in a way the check cannot reconcile, we leave the previous verified value in place rather than replace it with something we are not confident in.

What we will not publish

CompCharts intentionally leaves out a few categories that other sites lean on heavily.

• Average settlement amounts. No reliable public dataset exists for them. The closest figures come from paid databases (VerdictSearch and similar) that are not freely citable, or from law-firm-published averages that cannot be verified. We publish the statutory ceiling and the formula instead, so readers can do the math at their own wage and rating.
• AMA Guides content. The Guides are copyrighted. Where a state's law adopts a specific edition, we say so and link the state's adoption language. We do not republish AMA tables.
• Specific lawyer or law-firm recommendations. CompCharts does not run a lawyer referral service and does not accept paid placements from law firms. Where the right answer is "talk to an attorney," we point to the state bar referral service.
• Anything we cannot trace back to a primary source. If we cannot link a figure to a public state or federal document, it does not go on the page.

Corrections

If a figure on the site does not match the state's current published number, please contact us with the page URL and the source URL you checked it against. We re-verify and update within a few days, and the state's official source wins every time.