All the money benefits you get in your claim are tied to one number – your average weekly wage. Insurance companies want this number to be low so they don’t have to pay as much. Blue Water Legal is dedicated to working with you to figure out the maximum benefit you are allowed. Your average weekly wage is an estimate of what you earn in a given week. It considers anything your employer pays you cash for, including vacation and holiday pay. It does not include fringe benefits, like retirement plans or health insurance.

There are three ways to figure out your average weekly wage:

  1. If you worked most of the year, we have to take your earnings in the year before your injury and divide this number by the number of days actually worked. This daily wage is then multiplied by 260 if you are a five day/week worker or 300 if you are a six day/week worker. Then we divide your new yearly earning capacity by 52 weeks.  We need the number of days worked to use this calculations.
  2. We can take the wages of a coworker who has worked most of the year in your same occupation. It is very difficult to get coworkers to share this information.
  3. We can look at your past earnings history or some other reasonable way to determine your average weekly wage. We must use consecutive years to do this calculation beginning with your year of injury.

The first way gets the highest average weekly wage but it can be difficult to get your employers to give us records showing the specific days you worked and the amount of money you were paid during these days. Most employers don’t keep records this way so we have to fight to get them. Your patience in getting these records will ensure the best possible conclusion for your case.