Why You Only Get Two-Thirds of Your Pay When You’re Hurt at Work

You got hurt on the job. The doctor put you off work. Then the first check arrives…and it’s smaller than you expected. A lot smaller.

If you’re an injured worker in Nevada, your temporary disability checks pay 66 ⅔% of your average monthly wage — about two-thirds. Most other states do something similar. After years of earning a full paycheck, that gap can feel like a punishment for getting hurt doing your job. I get that question in my office almost every week: why am I being shortchanged for an injury that wasn’t my fault?

It’s a fair question. Here’s the honest answer.

A trade-off written more than 100 years ago

Workers’ compensation in Nevada (and across the country) is built on what’s often called the “Grand Bargain.” Before workers’ comp existed, an injured worker had only one path to recovery: sue your employer. That meant proving the company was negligent, fighting their lawyers in court, and waiting years for a verdict that might never come. Plenty of injured workers walked away with nothing.

The grand bargain changed that. Workers gave up the right to sue their employer for most workplace injuries. In exchange, employers had to provide benefits automatically, with no fault required, no lawsuit needed, no proof the company did anything wrong. Medical care, disability checks, and a permanent impairment award became guaranteed.

The price of that guarantee was a partial wage. Two-thirds, not the whole thing.

Why two-thirds and not 100%?

A few reasons get pointed to.

Disability checks aren’t taxed. Your regular paycheck has federal income tax, Social Security, and Medicare pulled out of it before you ever see it. Workers’ comp disability benefits don’t. For most workers, two-thirds of gross pay ends up reasonably close to what your take-home was before the injury. It still hurts — but not as much as the headline number suggests.

The legislature didn’t want to discourage going back to work. If an injured worker received 100% of their wage tax-free, the worry was that some people would put off returning to light duty. The two-thirds figure was a compromise meant to keep families afloat without erasing the financial pull back to the job.

There’s a cap. In Nevada, your benefit can’t exceed a maximum tied to the state’s average monthly wage, which the state recalculates each year. Higher earners often find their two-thirds figure is even lower than they expected, because the cap kicks in before the math does.

What this means for you

If you’re trying to make rent on a two-thirds check, none of those reasons make the gap any easier to swallow. But understanding why the system works this way matters, because it tells you where you have leverage and where you don’t.

You can’t change the two-thirds rule. What you can do is make sure your average monthly wage is calculated correctly. Overtime, tips, second jobs, bonuses, and certain other forms of compensation should be included where Nevada law allows. Those calculations get wrong all the time, and the difference shows up in every check until the claim closes.

If your check feels too small, it might not just feel that way. Give us a call — we’ll look at the math.