How Average Weekly Wage (AWW) Is Calculated in PA — and Why Insurers Get It Wrong

Why Your Average Weekly Wage Is the Most Important Number in Your Case

Almost every dollar you receive in a Pennsylvania workers' compensation claim flows from one figure: your Average Weekly Wage (AWW). Your wage-loss checks are a percentage of it, and even the value of a future settlement is measured against it. If the insurer sets your AWW too low—which happens constantly—you lose money every single week the claim is open. After a brain injury that may keep you out of work for months or years, an error here compounds into a serious loss.

How AWW Is Supposed to Be Calculated

Pennsylvania law does not simply take last week's paycheck. Depending on your work history, the correct method generally looks at the highest three of the four most recent 13-week quarters before your injury, then averages them. The goal is a number that reflects what you truly earned, not an artificially slow week.

Your AWW should include more than base pay:

• Overtime you regularly worked
• Bonuses and incentive pay
• Shift differentials
• The value of certain board and lodging provided by the employer
• Tips and gratuities that were reported

Where Insurers Get It Wrong

Common ways the insurance company understates AWW:

• Ignoring overtime and bonuses and using base hourly pay only.
• Choosing the wrong quarters, including a slow period instead of your highest earning weeks.
• Leaving out a concurrent job (Pennsylvania lets you combine wages from more than one employer—see our article on concurrent employment).
• Treating a new or seasonal worker incorrectly, when special calculation rules should apply.

Even a $75-per-week error is thousands of dollars over the life of a claim, and it lowers the baseline for any settlement.

What to Do

• Gather your pay records—pay stubs, W-2s, and any bonus statements from the year before your injury.
• Check the Statement of Wages the insurer files; the numbers there drive your rate.
• Do not assume it's correct. AWW disputes are among the most common—and most winnable—issues in comp.

How We Help

Attorney Michael Cardamone, a Certified Workers' Compensation Specialist, reviews the wage calculation on every case, because a low AWW quietly caps everything else. If a third party also caused your injury, we coordinate that claim with heavyweight personal injury colleagues so both are handled together. We don't say we do everything ourselves—we make sure everything gets done right.

Get Your Wage Rate Checked—Free

If you're receiving comp checks after a brain injury, let us verify your AWW before you accept it as final. Call (833) 898-4587—free, confidential, and no fee unless we win.