California Cumulative Trauma Claims Nearly Double Since 2018, With SoCal Attorneys Driving Shift

Cumulative trauma claims grew from 9.1% of all California workers’ compensation claims in 2018 to 16.5% in 2025, a net increase of 7.4 percentage points, according to a statewide analysis of claims data by the California Workers’ Compensation Institute.

The CT rate held relatively steady through 2021, rising just 0.7 percentage points between 2018 and 2022, before climbing 6.7 percentage points over the following three years. CWCI said the increase was driven primarily by an increasing number of workers filing at least one CT claim rather than existing claimants filing multiple claims, with participation accounting for about 87% of the growth within its analyzed subsample and intensity accounting for the remaining 13%.

Growth Spread Across Every Region And Industry

CWCI found that CT rates rose in every region of the state, industry, body-part category and worker-tenure group examined between 2018 and 2025, though unevenly. Los Angeles retained the state’s highest CT rate in both years, rising from 15.8% to 22.9%, but Inland Empire/Orange County posted the largest percentage-point increase, climbing from 9.9% to 19.8%.

Regions with historically lower CT activity saw rates more than double: North Counties/Sierras rose from 4.5% to 10.4%, the Bay Area from 5.3% to 11.7%, and the Valleys from 4.3% to 11.4%. In terms of claim volume, the Valleys posted the largest increase of any region at 136% between 2018 and 2025, while Los Angeles, despite its high rate, saw the smallest volume increase at 25%.

By industry, Food Services and Administrative Support/Waste Management experienced the largest rate increases, at 12.6 and 12.3 percentage points, respectively, both more than doubling over the period, while Manufacturing had the smallest increase at 4.6 points. CWCI’s decomposition analysis found that Food Services, Retail, Construction, Health Care and Administrative/Waste Management together accounted for 57% of the statewide increase.

Among body parts, Soft Tissue claims saw the largest rate increase at 30.0 percentage points, followed by Other Facial Soft Tissue at 25.9 points and Mental Disorder claims at 22.8 points. By 2025, more than half of all Mental Disorder claims and Body Systems/Multiple Body Systems claims were classified as CT.

CT claim volume for Soft Tissue rose 298% and Mental Disorder claims rose 253% between 2018 and 2025, with CWCI noting most of that growth occurred after 2021.

Population And Employment Trends Don’t Explain The Rise

CWCI found that population growth, employment trends, overall claim volume and shifts in worker tenure explained relatively little of the increase. Total claim volume declined statewide over the period even as CT claims rose in every region, and CT claims grew significantly in regions where population and employment were flat or declining, according to the report.

Changes in the tenure composition of the workforce also contributed little, with rate effects accounting for 7.11 of the 7.4 percentage-point statewide increase, compared with only 0.28 points from shifts in tenure mix, CWCI found. By 2025, the concentration of claims among workers with zero to five years of tenure had largely returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Attorney Representation Shifted Sharply Southward

CWCI’s analysis of the Division of Workers’ Compensation’s Electronic Adjudication Management System found that Southern California law firms represented 23% of CT cases involving Northern California employers in 2019, a share that climbed steadily to 79% by 2025. The shift went in only one direction: Northern California law firms’ representation of Southern California employer cases remained at about 1% throughout the study period, according to CWCI.

The venues where Northern California employer cases were litigated also shifted, with the share filed in Southern California district offices rising from 15% in 2019 to 38% in 2025. CWCI said this shift coincided with the pandemic-era expansion of virtual hearings, which reduced barriers to cross-regional representation, though the report said it did not evaluate whether the attorney shift contributed to the rise in CT claims.

Obtain the full report here. &