The direct answer: Louisiana workers' compensation pays wage-replacement benefits at two-thirds of the injured worker's average weekly wage, in four categories set out in La. R.S. 23:1221: temporary total disability (TTD), which continues without a fixed statutory cutoff until the worker recovers or their medical status changes; supplemental earnings benefits (SEB), which are capped at a combined 520 weeks including any TTD already paid on the claim; permanent partial disability (PPD), which pays for a set number of weeks tied to a schedule for specific body parts, such as 200 weeks for an arm or 150 weeks for a hand; and permanent total disability (PTD), which has no fixed duration and continues for as long as the worker meets a demanding clear-and-convincing-evidence standard of total disability. For injuries occurring between September 1, 2026, and August 31, 2027, the weekly benefit is capped at a maximum of $903 and a minimum of $241, based on the state's average weekly wage of $1,204.02. How long a specific worker's benefits actually last depends on which of these four categories applies to that claim, a medical and vocational question decided case by case rather than a single fixed number that applies to every injury.
La. R.S. 23:1221 sets out four separate categories of indemnity benefits for an employee disabled by a work injury, and Louisiana's Office of Workers' Compensation Administration treats them as genuinely different benefits, not stages of one payment. Which category applies to a given worker depends on medical evidence about the nature and permanence of the injury, and a claim can move from one category to another as the worker's condition changes over time.
TTD applies when an injury temporarily prevents the employee from engaging in any employment, and it pays 66 2/3 percent of the worker's average weekly wage, subject to the statutory maximum and minimum in effect on the date of injury. TTD is not capped at a fixed number of weeks by the statute itself; instead, it continues until the worker reaches maximum medical improvement, is released to some form of work, or the evidence establishes that the worker's disability has changed to a different category such as SEB or PPD.
PTD applies to the smaller group of injuries that leave a worker unable to engage in any employment or self-employment at all, including odd-lot or sheltered work, on a permanent basis. R.S. 23:1221(2) requires the employee to prove permanent total disability by clear and convincing evidence, without the benefit of any presumption of disability, and it pays 66 2/3 percent of wages for as long as that total disability persists. Because the statute sets no fixed number of weeks for PTD, it can, in the right case, continue for the remainder of the worker's life, subject to periodic review.
SEB applies when an injury leaves a worker able to earn wages, but less than 90 percent of what they earned before the injury. R.S. 23:1221(3) sets the payment at two-thirds of the difference between 90 percent of the worker's average pre-injury monthly wage and the wages that worker is earning, or is proven able to earn, in any month afterward. SEB is where Louisiana's statute imposes its clearest duration limit: benefits cannot be paid for more than a combined 520 weeks, and any weeks of TTD already paid on the same claim count against that 520-week total.
PPD applies to specific, permanent anatomical losses, most often the loss, or loss of use, of a hand, arm, foot, or leg. R.S. 23:1221(4) sets out a schedule assigning a fixed number of weeks to each listed body part — for example, 200 weeks for an arm, 150 weeks for a hand, 175 weeks for a leg, and 125 weeks for a foot — and it pays 66 2/3 percent of wages for that number of weeks, prorated by the percentage of impairment when the loss is partial rather than total. Unlike TTD, PTD, or SEB, a PPD award is not tied to the worker's ability to earn wages; it compensates the anatomical loss itself, on the fixed schedule the legislature set.
Every one of these four benefit categories starts from the same fraction: 66 2/3 percent, or two-thirds, of the injured worker's average weekly wage, generally calculated from the worker's earnings in the weeks immediately before the injury. That baseline percentage does not change between TTD, PTD, SEB, or PPD; what changes between them is how each category applies it, and for how long it is paid.
R.S. 23:1202 ties the maximum and minimum weekly compensation rate to the state's average weekly wage, recalculated every September 1. For injuries occurring between September 1, 2025, and August 31, 2026, the maximum weekly rate is $877 and the minimum is $234. For injuries occurring between September 1, 2026, and August 31, 2027, based on a statewide average weekly wage of $1,204.02, the maximum rises to $903 a week and the minimum to $241 a week, according to the Louisiana Workforce Commission's Office of Workers' Compensation Administration. The rate that applies to a given claim is locked in on the date of the injury; it does not increase later just because the statewide maximum rises in a subsequent year.
Because R.S. 23:1221(1) does not set a specific number of weeks for TTD, it is easy to assume it lasts indefinitely, but in practice it ends whenever the medical evidence shows the worker has stabilized, whether through full recovery, transition to permanent restrictions, or a vocational determination that the worker can return to some form of suitable work. At that point the claim typically shifts to SEB, PPD, or PTD, depending on what the medical and vocational evidence supports at the time.
SEB is the one category where Louisiana law states an outer limit directly in the statute: a combined maximum of 520 weeks, a little over ten years, counting from the first day of any indemnity benefits paid on the claim, including TTD. A worker who has already drawn TTD for a long recovery period has less than 520 weeks of SEB eligibility remaining afterward, not a fresh 520 weeks stacked on top of what TTD already used.
PTD has no analogous week limit. Because the clear-and-convincing standard for proving permanent total disability is demanding, relatively few claims are ultimately decided as PTD rather than SEB or PPD, but for the workers who meet it, benefits are tied to the disability itself rather than to a fixed schedule of weeks, subject to the employer's right to periodic medical review.
PPD benefits, by contrast, are entirely schedule-driven: once a worker's percentage of impairment to a listed body part is established, the number of weeks of payment follows directly from R.S. 23:1221(4) and does not depend on how the worker's earning capacity or medical condition develops afterward.
Wage-replacement benefits are only part of the picture. R.S. 23:1203 requires the employer or its insurer to furnish all reasonable and necessary medical treatment related to the work injury, separate from and in addition to whichever indemnity benefit category applies, and claims for those medical benefits carry their own filing deadlines under R.S. 23:1209, distinct from the deadline for wage-replacement benefits described below.
R.S. 23:1301 requires an injured worker, or someone acting on the worker's behalf, to give the employer notice of the injury within thirty days of the date it occurred, as a condition of maintaining a workers' compensation claim at all. Separately, R.S. 23:1306 requires the employer, once it has actual knowledge of an injury causing death or more than a week of lost time, to report that injury to its insurer within ten days.
R.S. 23:1209 sets a one-year prescriptive period: unless the parties have agreed on the compensation to be paid, or a formal claim has been filed, within one year of the accident, the claim is generally barred. When an injury does not show up until later, that one-year period instead runs from when the injury develops, but the claim is still barred if more than three years have passed since the accident itself. A related one-year period, extendable to three years from the last payment, applies separately to claims for medical benefits under R.S. 23:1203.
R.S. 23:1226 entitles an employee whose injury prevents earning wages equal to what the worker earned before the injury to prompt vocational rehabilitation services, provided by a licensed professional vocational rehabilitation counselor. The employer selects and pays for the counselor, and the stated goal is returning the worker to employment with a minimum of retraining as soon as possible, giving preference to jobs in the worker's local job pool, such as the Monroe and Ouachita Parish area, before looking statewide. A worker who disputes the adequacy of the vocational services offered, or an employer's refusal to provide them, can bring that dispute to the Office of Workers' Compensation Administration.
An employer or insurer can dispute whether an injury is compensable, which benefit category applies, or when a category should end, and a disputed claim is resolved through Louisiana's Office of Workers' Compensation Administration rather than by the wage-benefit statute alone. Because the notice, reporting, and prescription deadlines above run regardless of whether a dispute is pending, a worker facing resistance from an employer or insurer needs to track those dates independently of however the underlying disability dispute eventually gets resolved.
Louisiana workers' compensation is not a single benefit with a single duration; it is four separate categories under R.S. 23:1221, each triggered by different medical facts and each running on its own timeline. TTD and PTD have no fixed statutory cutoff and instead depend on the worker's medical and vocational status, SEB is capped at a combined 520 weeks including any prior TTD, and PPD pays a fixed number of weeks set by a schedule tied to the specific body part involved. All four pay at two-thirds of average weekly wage, subject to a maximum and minimum rate that resets every September 1 — $903 and $241 a week, respectively, for injuries between September 1, 2026, and August 31, 2027. Because notice, filing, and prescription deadlines run on their own separate clocks, a worker who waits to sort out which benefit applies risks losing the claim to a missed deadline instead. Hudson, Potts & Bernstein, LLP has represented northeast Louisiana workers and employers in workers' compensation matters; contact the firm through /contact/ to discuss a specific claim.
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