Do occupational groups really change the rating that much?

They can. In our worked example, the identical 10% lumbar WPI produces 10% PD (about $8,772) for a clerical group-111 worker and 20% PD (about $21,895) for a group-480 laborer — double the rating and two and a half times the money, from occupation alone.

What is an occupational variant?

A letter from C to J assigned by the schedule to each combination of impairment number and occupational group. It reflects how demanding that job is on that body part: middle letters leave the rating near standard, high letters raise it, low letters lower it.

How do I find the right occupational group?

By job title: the 2005 schedule maps 1,812 titles to 45 numbered groups. The calculator’s occupation search does the mapping automatically, and the full index is browsable — if a title is ambiguous, the actual duties control, which is a recurring dispute point.

Can occupation lower a rating?

Yes. The variant cuts both ways: the same shoulder impairment rates lower for a sedentary group than the standard rating, and a psychiatric or hearing impairment can rate higher for jobs that depend on those functions.

How Your Occupation Changes a California PD Rating

Same injury, same impairment, different job — and the PD rating can double. How California’s occupational groups and variants work, with a fully worked example: one 10% lumbar WPI rated as a clerk versus a laborer.

Two workers, the same herniated disc, the same 10% whole-person impairment — and thousands of dollars apart. The lever is the occupational adjustment: California’s recognition that a bad back means something different to a laborer than to a bookkeeper. This guide shows exactly how the mechanism works, with every number computed by our engine.

Groups: 1,812 job titles, 45 buckets

The 2005 schedule assigns every job title an occupational group — a three-digit number from 110 to 590. Group 111 is classic clerical; group 380 covers trades like carpenters and electricians; group 480 is heavy construction labor; group 490 covers firefighters. The mapping runs by title (with duties controlling when titles are ambiguous), and you can browse every group and title here.

Variants: the letter that moves the money

The group alone does nothing — the schedule crosses it with the impairment number to produce a variant letter from C to J. The variant answers one question: how much does this impairment matter in this kind of work? Then the variant maps the standard rating up or down before the age adjustment.

The worked pair

Same person (age 40 at injury, 2023 date of injury, $1,400 average weekly wage), same lumbar spine impairment at 10% WPI. Only the job changes:

Group 111 · clerical

100% (15.03.01.00 - 10 - [1.4]14 - 111C - 10 - 10) = 10% PD
30.25 weeks · $8,772.50

Group 480 · heavy labor

100% (15.03.01.00 - 10 - [1.4]14 - 480I - 20 - 20) = 20% PD
75.50 weeks · $21,895

Read the strings: everything is identical through the SB 863 adjustment (10 × 1.4 → 14). Then the clerical variant C pulls 14 down to 10, while the heavy-labor variant I pushes it up to 20 — double the PD, and because the weeks bracket climbs with the percentage, two and a half times the indemnity. (How to read every segment: the rating-string guide.)

Where the disputes live

Title versus duties. A “driver” who mostly lifts, a “supervisor” who mostly swings a hammer — when the title and the actual work diverge, the duties control, and each side has an incentive to characterize them. Dual employments and part-time work raise the same question. Because a one-group change can move the number this much, it’s routinely worth checking an opposing rating’s group before anything else — it’s the second segment of the string, right after the impairment number.

Check it yourself

Enter the same impairment twice in the calculator under two occupations and watch the variant letter and the final move — or model your rating against opposing counsel’s group in the compare view. Every figure above was produced by the same engine, and the occupational tables it uses were verified against the official 2005 PDRS.