Damages for lost wages are available when your injury keeps you from returning to work, even if the injury or initial accident had nothing to do with your work duties. However, calculating lost wages can be difficult if you work irregularly or if your injury will affect you for years to come.
In general, past lost wages are simple to calculate if we know how much you usually make and how much time you missed at work. Future lost wages are calculated by comparing how much you make now (which might be nothing) to how much you would have made in the future. These calculations often require financial experts. In cases with irregular work, calculating lost wages can be more difficult, but again, experts can help.
For a free evaluation of your potential injury case, call our Maryland personal injury lawyers at Rice Law at (410) 694-7291.
Calculating Current Lost Wages for an Injury Claim in Maryland
When you are hurt in an accident and have missed some amount of work, calculating the lost wages from the date of injury to today is somewhat straightforward. If you have healed completely, we may have a set number of days/weeks/months you missed work, and you are now back to working at full capacity.
Alternatively, we may be looking at lost time at work that will continue after today, but calculating lost wages from the date of injury to today is simple.
Factors Used to Determine Current Lost Wages
We can look at the wages you made before the accident and multiply that by the amount of time you were out of work. For example, if you missed 10 days of work and you made $115 per day, that’s $1,150 in lost wages. If you missed 2 months and have an annual salary of $51,000 ($4,250 per month), then that’s $8,500 in lost wages.
Things can be more complicated if you have an irregular work schedule, but we will address that separately below.
Claiming Future Lost Wages for an Injury Claim in Maryland
Our Baltimore personal injury lawyers often deal with injury cases involving disabilities that stop someone from returning to work at full capacity. In some situations, plaintiffs eventually return to work, but in a limited capacity. In others, they might be totally disabled, requiring lost wages for the rest of their life.
How to Calculate Damages for Future Lost Wages
To determine the value of earnings you will lose in the future, we need to determine what wages you would have made before the accident and then subtract any wages you are projected to make now. Both projections can involve detailed analyses of job markets, your skills and training, and your age and health before the accident, and we can hire experts to attest to them.
Factors to Consider for Future Lost Earnings
Calculating future lost earnings can be tricky, and we may need to consider a wide range of factors. These factors may vary based on your specific circumstances and the nature of your work, but they may include…
- Your age when you were injured
- Your career trajectory
- How you are paid (e.g., hourly, salary, gig work)
- Your ability to work before the accident
- Your ability to work after the accident
Calculating Future Wages You Would Have Earned if Not Injured
To determine how much you would have made before your injury, we need to review your salary before the accident and estimate how it might have grown or changed in the future. Would you have gotten promotions or raises? Would you have changed careers? What would your salary have been in 5 years? 10 years? 20 years?
Understanding How Many Years of Work Lie Ahead
We need to project how much longer you would have worked if not for the injury. If you were 2 years from retirement, calculating future wages is somewhat simple. If you were in your 20s with many working years ahead of you, we would need expert opinions about your potential retirement age, health, lifespan, etc., to determine how much you would have made in the rest of your life without the injury.
Inflation and cost-of-living changes should also be taken into account.
Calculating Future Wages Post-Injury
We must make the same kinds of projections about your ability to earn money post-injury. If you are totally disabled and all medical evidence points to you remaining that way, then you are likely to make $0 going forward. However, if you can now, or might soon be able to, return to work at full earning power or in limited/light duties, we can take that into account as well.
This means looking at factors such as how your injury will impact your potential career track – e.g., will it prevent future promotions, or will you be able to get back on track after a few years of recovery? Additionally, how much money can you make now, given your present (and future) disabilities? Will you be able to return to the same level of earnings? Will you be stuck with light-duty work forever?
Once we have these projections, we can subtract your projected future wages from your projected pre-injury wages to arrive at the total lost wage value.
How Are Lost Wages Calculated if You Work Irregular Hours
Not everyone has a “9-to-5” job or works consistent or regular hours for regular pay. Many “gig workers” do lots of different jobs and earn unpredictable monthly wages. Especially if you are an artist or creator of some kind – painter, writer, musician – your income might come in waves, with months of no income and months of big paychecks when your work is sold or finished.
There are a few ways to account for this, depending on the duration of your injury, and experts can help. If you work hourly and your hours change, we can average these values into daily, weekly, monthly, or annual wages and use them as a starting point for calculations.
Lost Wages for Plaintiffs Who Work Seasonally
Others work seasonally, meaning that 3/4 of the year, they make far less than they do in the other 1/4.
If you work seasonally or have certain points in the year with higher sales, we can compare what you missed or will miss in one season to what your income looked like in the previous season. We can also compare this to “normal” income from the rest of the year to project your income.
Determining Lost Wages for Salaried Workers
Salaried workers often earn a stable, predictable income, which makes it somewhat simpler to determine the value of lost wages after an injury.
We need to know what your salary was before you became injured and how long you are unable to work. If you earn $10,000 per month and cannot work for 2 months, you can claim $20,000 in lost earnings.
If you cannot return to work for a long time, or possibly ever, we need to consider how your salary was likely to change as your career progressed. This includes expected pay increases, cost-of-living adjustments, inflation, and career changes. We may compare these factors to the number of working years you would have had to understand how much income you have truly lost.
What Kind of Proof or Documentation Do We Need to Determine Lost Wages?
Calculations of lost income must be based on more than mere speculation. We need some hard facts and figures on which to base our determinations. These may include, but are not limited to…
- Your doctor’s diagnosis and prognosis
- Employer verification of your income
- Financial records
- Bank statements
- Past tax documents
- Personal business records
Can You Recover Lost Wages Through Workers’ Compensation?
If you were injured in a work-related accident, you may be eligible for Workers’ Compensation, which should provide benefits for lost income. However, in Maryland, Workers’ Compensation generally only pays for about two-thirds of your average weekly wage.
You may be able to sue third parties for remaining damages, but you cannot sue your employer for work-related accidents, barring very special circumstances.
Can You Recover Lost Wages After an Injury if You Are Self-Employed?
Plaintiffs who were self-employed or the sole proprietors of their businesses may also recover damages for lost wages. However, since these plaintiffs are self-employed, we cannot seek verification of their income from an employer. Instead, we would likely rely on their own personal business and financial records. As such, if you are self-employed, it is crucial that you keep thorough, accurate records of your business and income.
Call Our Maryland Injury Attorneys for Help Today
If you were injured in an accident, call (410) 694-7291 for a free case evaluation with Rice Law’s Annapolis, MD personal injury lawyers.