Business
Workers' Comp Insurance Cost by Industry
Based on cross-confirmed NCCI class-code rate data (WorkersCompCalculator.com, WCInsQuotes.com), updated August 2026.
Workers' compensation is priced per $100 of payroll by job classification, not by company size. Here is why that one number matters more than almost anything else in the quote.
Data sourced from NCCI class-code data (secondary sources), WorkersCompCalculator.com, WCInsQuotes.com
The classification code, not the company, sets the price
Workers' compensation is priced per $100 of payroll using a job classification code (an NCCI class code) assigned to the actual work an employee does, not a single rate for the whole business.
That is a genuinely different pricing model than general liability or a Business Owners Policy, both of which price off the business as a whole. Two companies with identical revenue and identical headcount can pay wildly different workers' comp premiums if their employees do different kinds of work.
How wide the spread actually is
Clerical / office work (class 8810): about
$0.2 per $100 of payroll.
Retail store (class 8017): about
$0.92 per $100 of payroll.
Restaurant / food service (class 9082): about
$2.18 per $100 of payroll.
Light manufacturing / assembly (class 3632 (Machine Shop, used as closest light-manufacturing proxy)): about
$3.46 per $100 of payroll.
General construction / contracting (class 5403): about
$7.84 per $100 of payroll.
Roofing / high-risk trades (class 5551): about
$14.22 per $100 of payroll.
Clerical and office work sits at the very bottom of that list, around $0.2 per $100 of payroll. Roofing sits at the top, around $14.22, roughly 71x higher, for identical payroll dollars.
Retail, restaurant work, and light manufacturing sit in between, each reflecting its own real-world claims history rather than a rough guess. None of that spread is arbitrary: a fall from a roof carries genuinely higher odds of a severe, expensive injury than a paper cut at a desk, and the rate is built directly from that difference.
Same rate, different payroll: how the dollar amount actually scales
Because the rate applies per $100 of payroll, the dollar cost scales directly with how much payroll sits in that classification, not with headcount alone. A business with fewer, higher-paid employees in a given classification pays the same total as one with more, lower-paid employees doing the identical work, as long as the total payroll dollar amount in that classification matches.
- On $50,000 of payroll: clerical work costs about $100 a year, roofing costs about $7,110 a year.
- On $150,000 of payroll: clerical work costs about $300 a year, roofing costs about $21,330 a year.
- On $500,000 of payroll: clerical work costs about $1,000 a year, roofing costs about $71,100 a year.
The ratio between the two stays constant, roughly 71x, at every payroll size, because it is a per-$100 rate, not a flat fee. Doubling your payroll roughly doubles the premium at any given classification, all else equal.
What this estimate leaves out, on purpose
Two real factors are deliberately excluded rather than approximated. First, an experience modification factor, a surcharge or credit tied to your own business's claims history relative to its peers in the same classification, is specific to each business and not a published industry average.
A business with a clean claims history can end up paying meaningfully less than the class-code rate alone suggests; a business with a poor history can pay more.
Second, a real quote splits payroll across every distinct classification your employees actually perform, while a quick estimate typically assumes one classification for the whole payroll. Both are worth asking your insurer about directly rather than assuming the class-code rate alone is your final number.
State also plays a role, though a smaller one than classification, see workers' comp requirements by state for how the legal requirement itself, not just the price, differs from state to state.
Frequently asked questions
Why does workers' comp cost so much more for one industry than another?
Because it prices to the actual injury risk of the specific job, not the business as a whole. Clerical work (NCCI class code 8810) prices around $0.2 per $100 of payroll, among the cheapest classifications that exist, while roofing (class code 5551) prices around $14.22, roughly 71x higher, for the exact same payroll dollar.
The gap reflects real, measurable differences in injury frequency and severity between a desk job and working at height.
If my company has both office staff and higher-risk workers, do I pay one blended rate?
No. A real policy splits your payroll across every distinct classification your employees actually perform and applies each classification's own rate to its own slice of payroll, not one company-wide average.
A construction company with both office staff and roofers on payroll pays the clerical rate on the office slice and the roofing rate on the roofing slice.
Can I lower my rate by improving safety?
Indirectly, yes, through your experience modification factor, a surcharge or credit applied to your base classification rate depending on your own claims history compared to other businesses in the same classification.
It is specific to each business and not a published industry average, so it is not part of the estimates here, but a clean claims history over time is the main lever a business actually controls once its classification is fixed.
Is the class code I pick really that important?
Yes, more than almost any other input. Because the rate difference between the cheapest and priciest common classifications runs into dozens of multiples, misclassifying even one employee's actual job duties can meaningfully over- or under-state a real quote.
If your business has employees doing meaningfully different work, describe each job accurately to your insurer rather than defaulting to whichever code seems simplest.