WC Costs Rising 6% Per Year: What the WCRI 2026 Report Means

Workers' comp costs have been rising steadily. The 2026 WCRI CompScope report puts a number on it: roughly 6% per year across 18 states, sustained from 2022 through 2025.

The WCRI CompScope Benchmarks 2026 Edition measures workers' comp cost per claim across 18 state systems (WCRI CompScope, 2026). Cost per claim, not total system costs or premium rates. When claim frequency is flat or falling, rising cost-per-claim is the mechanism that eventually pushes premium back up.

What 6% per year actually compounds to

Six percent annual growth sounds moderate until you run the numbers. A $25,000 average claim cost from 2022 becomes roughly $31,500 by 2025. That's a 26% increase over three years before frequency changes or payroll growth enter the calculation.

WCRI separates cost growth into three buckets: medical costs, indemnity (wage replacement), and delivery costs, which cover legal fees, case management, and other friction. All three have risen over the period. Medical cost growth has been driven by physical therapy utilization, prescription drug trends, and the expense of treating musculoskeletal injuries, which are the dominant injury type in construction work. Indemnity growth reflects both wage inflation and longer durations on partial-disability claims.

Why Florida and North Carolina are in the picture

Both states appear in the CompScope dataset. That matters because state-level cost data is the raw material NCCI uses to calculate Expected Loss Rates, or ELRs. ELRs are the per-$100-payroll benchmarks for each job classification baked into every NCCI experience rating worksheet.

Here's how the math flows: when statewide claim costs rise, NCCI eventually adjusts the ELR for each affected classification upward. When ELRs rise, a contractor's expected losses rise with them. The EMR formula compares actual losses to expected losses. If expected losses rise while actual losses hold steady, the modifier improves. That's the formula working in your favor.

But if actual losses are also rising, even at a rate below the statewide trend, the improvement doesn't materialize. The modifier stays elevated, and renewal pricing reflects it.

Open claims and reserve inflation

The cost trend in CompScope is particularly relevant for contractors with open claims inside their three-year experience window. WCRI measures incurred costs, which include reserves that carriers have set on cases not yet closed.

When medical and indemnity costs are trending upward across a state system, carriers tend to set reserves with that trajectory in mind. A claim that might have reserved at $30,000 in a stable cost environment might carry $40,000 or more in a 6%-per-year cost growth environment, even if the underlying injury and treatment plan are identical. That difference flows directly onto the contractor's experience rating worksheet and into the mod.

This isn't carrier overreach. It's the logical consequence of reserving against a moving benchmark. But a reserve that overstates a case-specific outcome inflates the mod just as surely as an actual overpayment would.

What an audit would check

An audit reviews open reserves within the experience period against the claim's actual treatment progress and prognosis. It examines whether the reserve reflects the specific injury and course of care for that case, or whether it reflects a carrier's application of a statewide cost trend to a claim that could reasonably be expected to close lower. In a cost environment rising at 6% per year, the difference between a case-specific reserve and a trend-indexed one can be substantial. That gap shows up directly in your mod.

If you have open claims in Florida, North Carolina, or any of the 18 states in WCRI's CompScope dataset, send us your NCCI worksheet and we'll review whether those reserves are tracking the claim or the trend.