Estimate projected lost income, adjust for wage growth, include benefits, account for mitigation earnings, and convert totals to present value using a discount rate.
Enter annual amounts and percentages. Results update when you click Calculate.
Future lost wages are the earnings a person likely would have received if a harmful event had not occurred. In personal injury, medical malpractice, employment matters, and wrongful death claims, this concept often appears as part of economic damages. The objective is to measure the difference between expected earnings without the injury and expected earnings after the injury, then present those losses in a format courts, insurers, and negotiators can evaluate.
A complete analysis may include wages, bonuses, commissions, overtime patterns, employer-paid benefits, retirement contributions, and even promotions that were reasonably probable. In many cases, projected losses are adjusted to reflect mitigation income, meaning the person’s expected earnings from other work they can still perform.
This calculator estimates annual losses over a selected number of years. For each year, it projects what compensation might have been, subtracts mitigation earnings, and then discounts the net annual loss back to present value.
Year 1 starts with current annual wage plus benefits load. Later years apply wage growth. This creates a forward-looking compensation path.
If someone can still work in a reduced capacity, those expected earnings are deducted from projected compensation to estimate net loss.
Each future loss amount is discounted with the selected rate. This converts future dollars into today’s dollars for consistent comparison.
You receive total undiscounted loss, present value total, and a year-by-year schedule for transparency and review.
Any calculator is only as good as its assumptions. To improve credibility, base your inputs on records and objective data whenever possible.
For legal claims, assumptions should usually be documented and defensible under examination. If an assumption is uncertain, run multiple scenarios (conservative, moderate, and aggressive) so decision-makers can see how results change.
Present value reflects the principle that money available now can potentially earn returns over time. Because future losses occur across many years, adding raw future amounts can overstate what a current lump-sum payment should be. Discounting addresses this by converting each future year’s loss to today’s equivalent value.
For example, a $50,000 loss ten years from now is not economically identical to $50,000 today. Present value methods help normalize those differences. Courts, economists, and claims professionals often rely on present value for exactly this reason.
If you are preparing a demand package, litigation file, mediation brief, or expert report support materials, gather:
The stronger the documentation, the easier it is to explain and defend projected losses. Clear sourcing also helps reconcile disagreements between parties.
Personal injury claim: A worker with permanent restrictions cannot return to their former role. The calculator estimates long-term wage loss after accounting for reduced-capacity employment.
Wrongful termination dispute: A professional experiences delayed re-employment at lower pay. Projected losses include wage differential and potential benefit reductions.
Long-term disability planning: Advisors evaluate how income impairment impacts family cash flow and settlement strategy.
Mediation preparation: Parties compare scenarios quickly by changing growth, discount, and mitigation assumptions.
Start with conservative assumptions, then create alternate scenarios. Document each assumption and save your year-by-year table. When sharing results, present both undiscounted totals and present value totals, since each can be relevant depending on context. If the estimate supports a legal claim, coordinate with counsel and, where needed, an economic expert.
A transparent methodology is often more persuasive than a single large number. This calculator is designed to provide that transparency by showing each annual step in the projection.
It is best used for preliminary estimates and planning. Court-ready calculations often require expert testimony, jurisdiction-specific methods, and documented assumptions.
That depends on legal standards and case strategy. Some analyses use gross amounts, while others may evaluate net effects or tax-adjusted frameworks.
Use scenario analysis by adjusting wage growth, mitigation growth, and years. Complex cases may require custom year-specific assumptions from an economist.
Yes, when evidence supports a probable progression. For formal disputes, assumptions about promotions should be carefully documented.