Kansas Workers Compensation Rates: Benefits, Caps, and Premiums

Kansas workers’ compensation rates work on two tracks. Injured employees receive weekly wage-replacement benefits equal to 66⅔% of their pre-injury average weekly wage, capped at $869 per week for injuries occurring between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026. Employers pay premiums built from advisory loss costs filed with the Kansas Department of Insurance, then adjusted by job classification, the employer’s own claims history, and each insurer’s pricing. Both sides sit inside a framework of statutory formulas and dollar caps that decide what workers collect and what businesses spend.

The Weekly Benefit Rate for Injured Workers

Every benefit calculation begins with the Average Weekly Wage. Kansas figures this from what you earned during the calendar weeks you worked for that employer, up to the 26 weeks immediately before the injury. If you worked fewer than 26 weeks, the total is divided by the actual number of weeks worked.¹

“Wage” is broader than base pay. The statute counts gross remuneration on an hourly, salary, commission, or other basis, and includes paid time off, bonuses, and gratuities. It also adds the value of employer-provided board and lodging (capped at $25 per week unless a higher value is proved), employer-paid life and disability insurance, health insurance, and contributions to pension and profit-sharing plans.¹ Kansas appellate courts have treated overtime as part of the wage calculation as well. The system uses gross rather than net earnings, so taxes and deductions are not subtracted first.

Once the Average Weekly Wage is set, the weekly benefit is 66⅔% of that number. A worker averaging $900 per week in gross earnings, overtime, and bonuses would land near $600 per week in benefits, subject to the floor and ceiling below.

Weekly Maximum and Minimum

Kansas sets a hard floor of $50 per week for disability benefits. The ceiling is the dollar amount nearest to 75% of the state’s average weekly wage, recalculated periodically.² For injuries occurring from July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2026, the maximum weekly benefit is $869. That ceiling applies to both temporary total and permanent total disability payments. If your 66⅔% figure comes out above $869, you receive $869; if it comes out below $50, you receive $50.

Aggregate Dollar Caps on Total Benefits

On top of the weekly maximum, Kansas imposes lifetime dollar caps on total benefits an employer must pay for a single injury under K.S.A. 44-510f:

Permanent total disability (including all prior temporary and partial payments): $400,000
Temporary total disability (including any prior permanent total, permanent partial, or temporary partial payments): $225,000
Permanent or temporary partial disability: $225,000
Permanent partial disability limited to functional impairment only: $100,000

These caps hold through June 30, 2027. Starting July 1, 2027, they will adjust annually to reflect changes in the state’s average weekly wage.³ The math is worth running before accepting a settlement: a worker drawing $869 per week for permanent total disability would exhaust the $400,000 cap in roughly 460 weeks, or about 8.8 years.

How the Rate Applies to Each Type of Disability

Temporary total disability benefits apply when the injury keeps you from working entirely but recovery is expected. There is a one-week waiting period; no wage-replacement check is paid for the first week. If the disability lasts three consecutive weeks or longer, that first week is paid retroactively.² Payments continue at 66⅔% of the Average Weekly Wage, within the $50–$869 range, for as long as the total disability lasts.

Permanent total disability uses the same weekly rate and the same floor and ceiling, and payments continue for the duration of the disability, bounded by the $400,000 aggregate cap.²

Permanent partial disability works differently because Kansas uses a schedule that assigns a set number of weeks to specific body parts. Selected values from the schedule:

Hand: 150 weeks
Arm, including shoulder: 225 weeks
Foot: 125 weeks
Leg: 200 weeks
Eye, loss of sight: 120 weeks
Thumb: 60 weeks
Index finger: 37 weeks

Awards for a partial loss are proportional. A hand impairment rated at 40% under the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment (6th edition) produces 40% of the 150 scheduled weeks. The weekly payment is the lesser of 66⅔% of the Average Weekly Wage or the weekly maximum, and any temporary disability already paid is subtracted from the scheduled weeks.⁴

Death Benefit Rates

When a workplace injury causes death, Kansas pays an initial lump sum of $60,000 to the surviving legal spouse and any wholly dependent children, split evenly among them. Ongoing weekly benefits then equal 66⅔% of the deceased worker’s Average Weekly Wage, subject to the same weekly maximum that applies to disability benefits.⁵

A surviving spouse receives benefits for life unless they remarry. Dependent children receive benefits until age 18, extended through the senior year of high school if enrolled (up to age 19), and further extended to age 23 for a full-time student at an accredited college or vocational program or for a child unable to earn wages due to a physical or mental condition.⁵ The minimum weekly death benefit is 50% of the state’s average weekly wage, well above the $50 floor for disability benefits.

Medical Benefits Sit Outside the Cap

Injured workers are entitled to all medical treatment reasonably necessary to cure or relieve the effects of the injury, and there is no separate dollar cap on medical care. It falls outside the aggregate benefit limits. One rate-relevant catch: the employer or its insurance carrier chooses the authorized treating physician.⁶ You generally cannot pick your own doctor and expect the insurer to pay without prior authorization, and requests for an independent medical evaluation run through the administrative system.

How Employer Premium Rates Are Built

For employers, the cost of coverage starts with advisory loss costs that the National Council on Compensation Insurance files with the Kansas Department of Insurance. NCCI analyzes several years of premium and claims data statewide to project what insurers need to cover actual losses and claims-handling expenses for each job classification.⁷

Kansas is a competitive rating state. Insurers are not required to charge the NCCI advisory rates as filed. Each carrier applies its own loss cost multiplier on top of the approved loss costs to cover underwriting expenses, overhead, and profit. Two insurers can quote very different premiums for the same business. The Kansas Department of Insurance reviews rate filings to ensure they are not excessive, inadequate, or unfairly discriminatory, but within those limits the market sets the price.

Recent filings show the direction of travel. For policies effective January 1, 2025, NCCI recommended a 6.1% decrease in voluntary-market loss costs and a 3.1% decrease in assigned-risk rates, reflecting improved loss experience.⁸ The 2026 filing, based on data through year-end 2024, noted increased claim severity in both medical and wage-replacement costs, tied partly to higher medical utilization by injured workers.⁷

What Moves an Individual Employer’s Rate

Classification Codes

Every role in a business is assigned a classification code based on the type of work performed and its injury risk. A roofing contractor and an accounting firm face very different base rates because the statistical probability and severity of injuries are nowhere close. The classification rate is expressed as a cost per $100 of payroll, and it is the single biggest variable in the premium formula. Miscoding runs both ways: a clerical worker mistakenly placed in a construction class produces overpayment, and the reverse produces an audit surcharge.

Experience Modification Factor

The Experience Modification Factor, or E-Mod, compares your company’s actual claims history against the average for businesses of similar size in the same classification. An E-Mod of 1.0 is exactly average. Fewer or less costly claims produce an E-Mod below 1.0, which reduces premium. A worse-than-average record produces an E-Mod above 1.0, which raises it. The E-Mod is recalculated annually using three years of claims data, so one bad year does not sit on the books forever, but it does not disappear quickly either.

The basic formula: classification rate times payroll (per $100) times E-Mod. A business with $500,000 in payroll, a classification rate of $2.50 per $100, and an E-Mod of 0.85 calculates ($500,000 ÷ 100) × $2.50 × 0.85 = $10,625 before other adjustments. The same business with an E-Mod of 1.20 owes $15,000. That spread is the system’s built-in incentive for workplace safety.

Safety and Return-to-Work Credits

Many Kansas insurers offer premium credits for documented workplace safety programs, drug-free workplace certifications, and return-to-work programs that move injured employees onto modified duty faster. The specific discounts vary by carrier and policy. The larger effect is indirect: fewer injuries pull the E-Mod down at the next renewal, and that compounds year over year.

Attorney Fees Come Out of the Benefit

If you hire a lawyer to pursue a claim, Kansas caps attorney fees at the lesser of a reasonable amount for the services rendered or 25% of the compensation recovered and paid. Every fee arrangement must be in a written contract between you and the attorney, filed with and approved by the director of workers’ compensation.⁹ The director reviews the contract whether the case settles by agreement, goes to a hearing, or ends in a court judgment. The approval requirement is designed to keep fee arrangements from consuming a disproportionate share of the benefit.

1
Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Kansas Code 44-511 – Definitions; Average Weekly Wage
2
Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Kansas Code 44-510c – Compensation for Permanent Total and Temporary Total Disabilities
3
Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Kansas Code 44-510f – Maximum Compensation Benefits
4
Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Kansas Code 44-510d – Compensation for Permanent Partial Disability
5
FindLaw. Kansas Code 44-510b – Death Benefits
6
State of Kansas Department of Labor. Injuries at Work
7
National Council on Compensation Insurance. Summary of the Proposed Kansas Workers Compensation Loss Cost and Assigned Risk Rate Filing Effective January 1, 2026
8
National Council on Compensation Insurance. Summary of the Proposed Kansas Workers Compensation Loss Cost and Assigned Risk Rate Filing Effective January 1, 2025
9
FindLaw. Kansas Code 44-536 – Attorney Fees