The California SDI base period is a fixed 12-month window of past wages that the Employment Development Department uses to decide whether you qualify for State Disability Insurance and how much you’ll be paid each week. It’s made up of four consecutive calendar quarters, and it always ends several months before your claim starts. For 2026 claims, the weekly benefit runs from $50 to $1,765, and the amount is tied directly to what you earned during the single highest-paid quarter inside that window.1Employment Development Department. Disability Insurance Benefits
Why the Base Period Ends Months Before Your Claim
The base period does not include the months right before you became disabled. It reaches further back, ending roughly five to six months before your claim start date. The reason is practical: employers file wage reports with the state once per quarter, and the EDD needs quarters where every employer has already reported your earnings. By the time you file, the most recent months haven’t cleared that reporting cycle yet.
Only those four quarters count. A raise, a second job, or heavy overtime matters only if it fell inside the window. Earnings before or after it play no role in your claim, no matter how recent or how large.
How to Find Your Own Base Period
Which 12 months make up your base period depends entirely on when your disability begins. California law maps the starting month to a specific window:2California Legislative Information. California Code Unemployment Insurance Code – UIC 2610
- Claim starts in January, February, or March: the 12 months ending the previous September 30.
- Claim starts in April, May, or June: the 12 months ending the previous December 31.
- Claim starts in July, August, or September: the 12 months ending the previous March 31.
- Claim starts in October, November, or December: the 12 months ending the previous June 30.
An example makes the lag concrete. If you become disabled in February 2026, your base period is the 12 months ending September 30, 2025, which covers the four quarters from October 2024 through September 2025. Wages you earned in October, November, or December 2025 won’t factor in at all, even though they’re the most recent on your pay stubs.3Employment Development Department. Disability Insurance Benefit Payment Amounts This catches people off guard, particularly workers who recently started a higher-paying job and expect it to boost their benefit.
The $300 Minimum to Qualify
You need at least $300 in wages during your base period to establish a valid claim, and those wages must have had SDI taxes withheld. On a pay stub, the deduction usually shows up as “CASDI.”4California Legislative Information. California Code Unemployment Insurance Code 2652 – Wages Required for Disability Benefits Most workers clear this floor without issue. It becomes a problem for people who were self-employed for most of the window (self-employed workers don’t pay into SDI unless they opted into elective coverage) or who only worked briefly before becoming disabled.
You don’t need to send in pay stubs. The EDD pulls your earnings from the quarterly wage reports your employer already filed with the state. Keeping your own records is still a good idea in case an employer underreported.
How Your Highest Quarter Sets Your Weekly Benefit
Once the EDD identifies your four base-period quarters, it picks out the single quarter where you earned the most. That one quarter drives everything. The formula is a sliding scale, and lower earners replace a larger share of their wages than higher earners:3Employment Development Department. Disability Insurance Benefit Payment Amounts
- Highest-quarter earnings below $300: not eligible.
- $300 to $722.49: flat $50 per week.
- $722.50 to $16,279.90: approximately 90 percent of your weekly wages.
- $16,279.91 to $20,931.30: fixed $1,127 per week.
- Above $20,931.30: approximately 70 percent of your weekly wages, capped at $1,765 per week.
Most workers now land between 70 and 90 percent of their regular pay, not the 60 to 70 percent figure that appears in older write-ups. The formula was updated, and the current tiers favor lower-income workers. The $1,765 cap means high earners will replace a smaller share of their income no matter how large their highest quarter was.
When the EDD Will Substitute a Different Base Period
If your standard base period doesn’t reflect what you were actually capable of earning, the EDD can swap out quarters. California law lets the state exclude any quarter in which you performed no work for 60 or more days while actively seeking employment, replacing it with an earlier quarter that gives a truer picture of your wages.5California Legislative Information. California Code Unemployment Insurance Code – UIC 2612
The EDD also recognizes three specific situations where a special base period may apply:3Employment Development Department. Disability Insurance Benefit Payment Amounts
- Military service that kept you from earning civilian wages during the standard window.
- Time spent collecting workers’ compensation for an industrial injury.
- A strike or lockout that prevented you from working.
You have to ask for a special base period. The EDD will not look for these situations on its own. When filing, flag the issue and provide documentation showing why your standard base period is unrepresentative.
What the Base Period Does Not Cover
Two points often confuse new claimants. First, nothing you earned in the months immediately before your disability counts toward your benefit, because those months fall outside the base period by design. Second, the base period controls your eligibility and benefit amount, but it does not control when payments start. Every claim has an unpaid seven-day waiting period at the beginning; the first payable day is the eighth calendar day after your disability start date, and claims shorter than eight days pay nothing at all.6Employment Development Department. Disability Insurance Claim Process A single claim can then pay for up to 52 weeks.
If you want to confirm your own numbers before filing, locate the four quarters that match your claim start month, add up what you earned in each, find the highest one, and run it against the tier it falls into. That’s the figure the EDD will work from.