Published September 15, 2026 · Morris Starkman
It starts with one number: seventy percent
New Jersey pays temporary disability benefits at 70% of the weekly wages you were earning at the time of the injury. That rate is set by N.J.S.A. 34:15-12, and it is the same percentage used for permanent total disability and for death benefits paid to dependents.
Seventy percent is not the whole answer, because the statute puts a ceiling and a floor around it. For 2026 those are:
- Maximum: $1,199 per week. Up from $1,159 in 2025.
- Minimum: $320 per week for temporary and total disability. Up from $309.
- Minimum for permanent partial disability: $35 per week. That figure has not moved.
One detail costs people money and almost nobody knows it: the rate is fixed by the date of the accident, not the date you get paid. A 2025 injury still pays at 2025 rates in 2026. If your accident happened in late December, the difference between one week and the next is real.
The first seven days are a hole. You can climb out of it.
Under N.J.S.A. 34:15-14, no compensation other than medical aid is payable "until the employee has been disabled seven days." So the first week produces no check.
But read the next sentence of the statute. "Should the total period of disability extend beyond seven days, additional compensation shall at once become payable covering the above prescribed waiting period." Stay out past seven days and that first week is owed to you retroactively.
If you were out eight days and were paid for one, someone made a mistake. It is worth a phone call.
Everything scales off one figure — check it
Your whole case sits on your average weekly wage. Seventy percent of the wrong number is the wrong number for the life of the claim, and carriers calculate it from whatever payroll data they were handed.
Look at the rate the carrier assigned you and ask whether it reflects:
- Regular overtime you actually worked.
- Shift differentials and guaranteed bonuses.
- A second job — New Jersey may consider concurrent employment in some circumstances.
- Seasonal or fluctuating hours, where a short lookback flatters the employer.
An error of a hundred dollars a week in the average weekly wage is seventy dollars a week out of your pocket, every week, for as long as benefits run. It also drags down the permanency award at the end, because that is calculated off the same wage.
Temporary benefits do not last forever
Temporary disability benefits run while you are actively treating and unable to work, and the statute caps them at 400 weeks. In practice they stop earlier, when the authorized doctor says you have reached maximum medical improvement or releases you to work.
That is not the end of the case. It is the handoff to a completely different calculation.
Permanent partial disability: the 600-week math
Once treatment ends, the question becomes what you did not get back. New Jersey answers it in weeks.
For a disability expressed as a percentage of total, the award is that same percentage of 600 weeks. A finding of 25% of partial total is 150 weeks of benefits. A finding of 10% is 60 weeks.
Specific body parts have their own schedules in N.J.S.A. 34:15-12(c). The full loss of:
- a hand — 260 weeks, or 300 weeks where the loss of function is 25% or more
- an arm — 330 weeks
- a foot — 250 weeks, or 285 weeks at that same 25% threshold
- a leg — 315 weeks
- vision in an eye — 200 weeks
- a thumb — 80 weeks; a first finger — 60 weeks; a great toe — 40 weeks
- hearing in both ears — 200 weeks
Most cases are not amputations. They are a percentage of one of those schedules — a shoulder that will not go overhead, a knee that gives out on stairs, a back that ends a career in the trades. The percentage is argued, and it is argued with medical evidence.
Two things follow from that. The number is not automatic, and the carrier's doctor and your doctor will rarely land in the same place.
Permanent total: 450 weeks, and then the real question
If you cannot return to any gainful employment, permanent total disability pays 70% of your wages for 450 weeks. At that point payments stop — unless you show that it remains impossible to earn what you earned before the accident. Make that showing and benefits continue.
This is the part of the statute that decides whether a catastrophically injured worker is supported for nine years or for life, and it turns on evidence assembled long before week 450.
If a worker is killed
Under N.J.S.A. 34:15-13, dependents receive 70% of wages, subject to the same 2026 maximum of $1,199, for 450 weeks. After that:
- A surviving spouse continues to receive benefits for life, unless he or she remarries.
- Children under 18 continue until 18, or until 23 if enrolled full time as students.
Burial and funeral costs are covered up to $5,000, paid to the dependent or to whoever actually paid them.
Medical is the piece with no percentage on it
Authorized medical treatment is paid at 100%. No deductible, no copay, no coinsurance, no annual limit. For a serious injury this is often worth more than every weekly check combined.
The catch is who controls it: in New Jersey the employer and its carrier choose the treating physician. That single rule shapes more claims than the benefit rates do — we wrote about it separately, and it is worth reading before your next appointment.
Three numbers to check this week
- Your average weekly wage, as the carrier calculated it. Compare it to your own pay records, overtime included.
- Your weekly rate. It should be 70% of that wage, and it should sit between $320 and $1,199 for a 2026 accident.
- Your first week. If you were disabled more than seven days, the waiting period is owed.
If any of the three looks wrong, do not argue it with the adjuster alone. Bring the paperwork in. At this firm you sit with the attorney, not a screener, and the first conversation costs nothing.
This article is general information about New Jersey law, not legal advice about your situation. Benefit rates change annually and are set by the date of the accident. If something here applies to you, call and ask.