What Are Lost Wages?

Accidents such as car crashes can completely upend your life. Instead of focusing on work and other commitments, your entire existence may need to shift to healing and recovering. The costs related to medical treatment are often extensive. However, they are not the only financial strain placed on those who suffer personal injuries. The harm caused may also make it impossible to continue working. In some cases, it may even prevent a person from ever returning to their previous line of work. Courts understand this unfortunate impact, and they allow plaintiffs to recover compensation for what they lost by not being able to perform their job. Understanding what might be included in this category is important for anyone with severe accident-related injuries.

What are lost wages in a personal injury claim?

Your lost wages are simply the income that you would have made if you were healthy and did not suffer injuries from your personal injury accident. Therefore, if you have spent time out of work to attend medical appointments, recover from the pain and discomfort you felt, or rest and heal from your injuries, the income you should have earned during this period may be considered lost wages.

What can be included as lost wages?

If you cannot work and earn an income, you may be experiencing difficulties paying your bills. Therefore, it is very important that you know and understand everything that may be included as lost wages. Without this knowledge, you could leave money on the table you were entitled to. Below are several factors that might influence the lost wages you can recover in Vancouver, WA.

• Your hourly pay or salary: Whether you work hourly or on salary, you should have an idea of the regular income you earn, and what you would have made if you were working instead of recovering from injuries.
• Your overtime pay: Overtime pay is common among certain workers. For example, those in the retail industry may experience seasonal overtime, during which they must work additional hours to help customers with their holiday shopping. Accountants may also be required to work overtime during tax season to help people prepare their taxes. Therefore, if you work a job for which you would have earned overtime pay, you may be able to seek compensation for the overtime income you lost.
• Your bonuses or commissions: If you work at a job that gives a commission for selling certain services or items, you may be able to claim commission as part of your losses. Bonuses are also frequently claimed when individuals work at companies that routinely give bonuses.
• Your sick or vacation pay: Sick and vacation pay is usually accrued over a certain period. Therefore, if you could work, you may have earned more sick and vacation time, making you eligible to potentially claim these losses.
• Your healthcare and retirement benefits: If you cannot contribute to your retirement accounts or even lose your healthcare benefits due to missing work, you may be able to claim the value of these benefits as lost wages.
• Additional perks provided by your job: Other perks that your job may provide that you could be losing out on are a company cell phone, gym membership, company vehicle, tuition reimbursement, child care assistance, and more. If you lose out on these perks, you may be able to include them in your claim for lost wages.

What is the difference between lost wages and future earning capacity?

Many people confuse lost wages with future earning capacity. However, it is important to know that these two terms are not the same thing. While both of these types of losses focus on determining how much earnings you lose, lost wages focus on the income you have already lost. Future earning capacity focuses on the income you will lose in the future. When assessing your future earning capacity, you should also consider lost raises, promotions, work opportunities, and more. Sometimes, it might be necessary to have an expert witness offer their estimate of your lost future income.

How do I prove lost wages in Vancouver, WA?

To prove your lost wages, you will need to obtain strong evidence, such as:

• Pay stubs
• Tax documents
• Documents showing bonus, overtime, hourly, or salary pay
• Letter from your employer, supervisor, or manager
• Invoices or receipts

The best piece of information that you can obtain to help you prove your lost wages is a letter from your employer, supervisor, or manager stating when you were hired, your last date of employment before the accident, how much you make in hourly or salary wages, how many hours or days you normally work, whether overtime is required, how much pay you receive in overtime, whether perks are offered, and what type of bonus structure the company follows. You should also gather medical records, doctor’s notes, and the journal you have been writing about your pain and hardships since the accident to help you show how your injuries prevented you from being able to work and bring in any income.

What types of injuries typically qualify for lost wage claims?

Any injury that prevents you from working can qualify for a lost wage claim. Some examples include:

• Broken bones
• Spinal cord injuries
• Traumatic brain injuries
• Dental and facial injuries
• Burns
• Neck injuries
• Amputations
• Paralysis
• Psychological injuries
• Shoulder injuries
• Knee injuries
• Sprains and strains

How do I calculate lost wages?

Depending on what type of worker you are, there are different ways to calculate your lost wages. For example, if you are an hourly worker, you will take the hourly wage that you make and multiply it by the number of hours you missed. If you make $25 per hour and miss 120 hours of work, your lost wages would be $3,000.

If you are a salary worker, you must divide your salary by the number of days you work, giving you the amount of money you make each day. For example, if you work 260 days per year and make $52,000, you will divide $52,000 by 260, giving you $200. Therefore, if you missed three weeks of work, you would take the money you make per day ($200) and multiply it by 15, totaling $3,000.

Self-employed freelancers and gig workers will need to examine their earnings deeply to determine how much they have lost in wages. This is because these workers’ incomes can vary by day, week, month, or even season.

The experienced personal injury lawyers at Philbrook Law understand the challenges of suffering an injury in any type of accident. Please call our office or submit our contact form to schedule a free, no-obligation consultation in Vancouver, WA. We also have offices in Battle Ground, WA and Portland, OR, to better serve our clients.