News Archive

Email A Friend

More News

April 25, 2024
California Department of Industrial Relations and Cal/OSHA Will Honor Workers’ Memorial Day at Four Events in California on April 28th-29th 2024. Cal/OSHA Joining Partners in Arcadia, Richmond, San Diego and San Francisco.

April 23, 2024
California Division of Workers' Compensation Launches Online Portal for Submission of QME Medical-Legal Reports

April 22, 2024
California Division of Workers’ Compensation Posts Updated Time of Hire Notice

April 22, 2024
Sullivan on Comp Launches ChatSOC. It's an Innovative Chatbot for California Workers' Compensation Professionals Integrated with an Authoritative Legal Treatise

Well, first the bad news.

Some pundits are saying it will take several more years for our nation to get back to an unemployment rate of 5%, and until that happens, profitability in workers’ compensation insurance will be nothing to write home to Mom about.

Robert P. Hartwig, Ph.D., speaking two weeks ago at the Florida Workers’ Compensation Institute’s annual Workers’ Compensation Educational Conference, emphasized that the demand for commercial insurance has dropped as unemployment has risen.  “Nationwide, we lost about 8.4 million jobs from December 2007 through December 2009.  The recession caused the largest impact on workers’ compensation exposure in 60 years.” 

Hartwig also commented at that same conference, “Profitability in workers’ compensation is heading downhill rather rapidly.  We are earning about 40 to 50 percent less than we were pre-crisis.” 

During just the past two years, workers’ compensation has lost 23 percent of its premium.  But the recession accounts for about half of that drop.  Rating bureaus have lowered rates and also carriers across the board have dropped pricing by 4 percent. 

So, for employers who still think workers’ compensation expense is still going up, the truth is that the cost of workers’ compensation as it relates to total employer cost has come down in the past decade. 

Now the good news is that private sector job growth has happened every month in 2010, and that is good for the workers’ compensation insurance market.  As bad as things may feel today, they have way improved over a year and a half ago. 

Readers may write to writer Lonce LaMon at lonce@adjustercom.com