The National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) released its 2026 State of the Line report, and its conclusions are no surprise to industry experts: workers’ comp remains a profitable line of insurance, even as most states lower employers’ premium rates.

While the key measure of profitability, the net combined ratio, is less impressive than last year’s, workers’ comp is still a winner for insurers. As a result, the NCCI, independent rating bureaus, and other comp authorities across the country have reported lower loss cost ratios and recommended easing the premium burden on employers.

Mutual insurers like Texas Mutual and the Louisiana Workers’ Compensation Company (LWCC), both the largest carriers in their respective states, are returning millions in dividends to policyholders based on recent performance.

…and then there’s California, where the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau (WCIRB) insists that employers pay more for comp coverage.

The WCIRB requested a 10.4% premium increase for 2026 on top of last year’s 8.7% hike. Using unverifiable data and facing skepticism about how it reportedly “skews” its data to support higher premiums from which its insurer members benefit, the WCIRB insists that California is a rare exception to the national trend.

Never mind that many of California’s insurers are the same national insurers making bank on comp across the country, or that California insurers have loss ratios that indicate profit. Even the state’s non-profit insurer of last resort, the California State Compensation Insurance Fund (CA State Fund), has healthy loss ratios and announced its own dividend return to policyholders.

Employers across the US are enjoying a period of shrinking costs for comp coverage. California employers should be incensed at being an inexplicable exception.

NCCI: Comp Is Crushing It

According to the latest data from NCCI, the combined ratio for workers’ comp nationwide for 2025 sits at 91% (anything under 100% indicates profit; the lower, the better). While last year’s combined ratio of 86% was even happier news, 91% is still in firmly profitable territory, with the NCCI estimating that insurers collectively sit on about $14 billion in reserves.

Moreover, comp remains profitable even as premiums drop and claim severity ticks upward.

WCIRB: Raise Premiums Because…Reasons

By way of justifying its request for a second consecutive major premium hike for California employers, the WCIRB issued a formal rate filing and published a slide deck of its findings. As daisyNews reported, the WCIRB’s materials exemplify the organization’s lack of clarity, featuring arguably misleading visual representations of its insurer-derived, unverifiable data, as in the graph below.

Workers’ comp is a moneymaker for insurers. In nearly every other state, premiums are falling, with large mutual insurers (and the CA State Fund!) rewarding policyholders with dividends. California's medical fee schedules are among the lowest in the nation, national medical inflation is modest, and California workers' comp insurers are reporting healthy loss ratios.

So what gives?

Some industry experts, including, according to Workers’ Comp Executive, NCCI chief actuary Donna Glenn, note the unique preponderance of cumulative trauma (CT) claims in California. However, many costs related to CT claims reflect issues that are arguably the result of insurers’ choices, such as litigation costs and disability payments resulting from battles over delayed and denied care. According to the WCIRB itself, 25% of CT claims have zero paid medical costs after 18 months.

In other words, as the Workers’ Compensation Research Institute demonstrated in its recent CompScope report, medical treatment costs cannot explain California employers’ ever-increasing premiums.

Before they accept another 10.4% hit to their bottom lines, California employers should demand a more thorough explanation from the WCIRB, based on underlying data that independent parties can access and investigate.

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