Florida's 6.9% Workers' Comp Cut Won't Reach Roofers
Florida approved its ninth straight workers' comp rate cut for 2026. The statewide number is 6.9% lower. For roofers and other high-hazard trades, the savings may never arrive, and the reason isn't the rate.
Florida approved a 6.9% average workers' comp rate cut for 2026 (Florida OIR, November 2025), the ninth straight year of decreases. The catch is the word average. High-hazard construction classes like roofing don't get the same relief, carriers are leaving those classes, and an elevated mod can push a contractor into the assigned-risk market no matter the statewide number.
Florida just cut workers' comp rates again. Ninth year running. If you run a roofing crew, don't pencil in the savings yet.
The headline is a 6.9% average decrease for the voluntary market, effective January 1, 2026 (Florida OIR, November 2025). Florida's Office of Insurance Regulation approved it after a public hearing in October, based on a September filing from NCCI (the National Council on Compensation Insurance). Since 2003, the state's rates have fallen roughly 85%. For a lot of employers, that's a long tailwind. For high-hazard trades, the word doing the heavy lifting is average.
An average is a blend, not your rate
NCCI files loss costs class by class, hundreds of them. The 6.9% is a weighted blend across all of them. Some classes drop more. Some drop less. A few move the other way. The trades carrying the heaviest loss experience, roofing chief among them, are the ones whose loss costs stay stubborn while the office and clerical codes pull the statewide average down.
So the press release and your renewal can tell two different stories. The state announces a cut while your class barely moves. Nationally, the pressure points the same direction. NCCI's 2026 State of the Line shows medical and indemnity claim severity each rose 4% in 2025 even as lost-time claim frequency fell 2% (NCCI, May 2026). Claims are getting rarer and more expensive at once. That mix is exactly what keeps a high-hazard class from sharing in an average cut.
The carriers are voting with their pens
Watch what underwriters do, not what the average says. Mark Askins, CEO of BrightFund, the workers' comp program for the Florida Roofing and Sheet Metal Contractors Association, said the quiet part out loud: underwriters don't feel they can get the premium they need to cover the loss costs over time (Insurance Journal, November 2025).
The result is a thinning market. Only a handful of carriers still write high-risk classifications in Florida, and minimum premiums are expected to climb to at least $25,000 per employer. For some roofers, the options narrow to a professional employer organization (PEO) or the assigned-risk market. A lower filed loss cost you can't actually buy at isn't a discount. It's a number on a page.
When the rate drops, the mod is the lever left
Your premium is payroll times the class rate times your experience modification rate, the mod. The statewide filing moved the rate. Your payroll is your payroll. The mod is the one term still tied to your own file, and in a hardening high-hazard class it does double duty.
It multiplies a base rate that didn't fall much to begin with. And it's the first number an underwriter reads when deciding whether to quote you at all or route you to assigned risk. On a class already priced at a $25,000 minimum, an account sitting at a 1.25 mod isn't paying that minimum; it's paying the minimum stretched by the mod. The distance between a 1.25 you were handed and a 1.05 your file actually supports is real money on every renewal, and in this market it can be the line between a voluntary quote and the pool.
In our reviews of Southeast contractor worksheets, the high-hazard accounts are where a single stale reserve or a miscoded payroll does the most damage, because every error gets multiplied by the biggest rates on the manual.
What an audit would check
An audit checks whether the mod you carry into a tightening roofing market reflects your actual file. That means classifications that match the work your crews really perform, claim values on the worksheet that match the carrier's current reserves, and reserves inside your experience window that haven't drifted above what those claims will ultimately cost. In a class where carriers are already reluctant, an inflated mod is the difference between a voluntary quote and assigned risk.
A clean worksheet won't bring carriers back to roofing or undo a hard market. It can keep your mod from being the reason you're priced out of the market that's still writing. Send us your NCCI worksheet and we'll review it for free.