Workers' Comp Rates for Clerical Telecommuter Employees (Class Code 8871)
Last verified: 2026-06-08 · Reviewed against NCCI and state rating-bureau filings — how we verify
Description
Covers clerical employees performing office work from home or another non-employer location for most of their work time.
Common Businesses
Hazard Group
B
Filed Figures Published
2
states · class percentile 0
Filed Figures for Class Code 8871 in the States That Publish Them
Copied from each state's own regulator or rating bureau filing, per $100 of payroll. A loss cost is what the filing calls it — your insurer multiplies it by its own loss cost multiplier; a rate is a manual rate. States not listed publish no per-class figure this site has transcribed.
Judged only from filed tables, code 8871 has a class percentile of 0 (0 = the cheapest class, 100 = the most expensive) across the 2 filings that list it.
How States Rank for Class Code 8871
Cost index 1.00 = the median of the 47 rated states. It is a relative position from this site’s model, not a price, and it does not vary by class code; a state’s filed figure, where it publishes one, is shown beside it. North Dakota, Ohio, Washington and Wyoming are not included. Each is a monopolistic state fund that sets premium on its own basis rather than on an NCCI class-code rate per $100 of payroll, so there is no comparable figure to average or rank.
| State | Cost index | Filed figure | Filing effective |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indiana | 0.73 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Texas | 0.74 | — | 2026-07-01 |
| Virginia | 0.78 | — | 2026-04-01 |
| Utah | 0.79 | — | 2026-02-01 |
| Arkansas | 0.82 | — | 2026-07-01 |
| Colorado | 0.83 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| South Dakota | 0.83 | — | 2026-07-01 |
| Arizona | 0.86 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Nebraska | 0.88 | — | 2026-02-01 |
| North Carolina | 0.88 | — | 2026-04-01 |
| Idaho | 0.89 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Tennessee | 0.89 | — | 2026-10-01 |
| Kansas | 0.90 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Mississippi | 0.91 | — | 2026-03-01 |
| New Mexico | 0.92 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Kentucky | 0.93 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| South Carolina | 0.93 | — | 2026-04-01 |
| Iowa | 0.95 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Missouri | 0.96 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Nevada | 0.97 | — | 2026-03-01 |
| Georgia | 0.98 | — | 2026-03-01 |
| Maryland | 0.98 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Oregon | 0.99 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| West Virginia | 1.00 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Alabama | 1.01 | — | 2026-03-01 |
| Minnesota | 1.01 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| New Hampshire | 1.01 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Wisconsin | 1.01 | $0.054 rate | 2026-10-01 |
| Delaware | 1.03 | — | 2025-12-01 |
| Maine | 1.03 | — | 2025-04-01 |
| Rhode Island | 1.04 | — | 2026-08-01 |
| Michigan | 1.05 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Vermont | 1.05 | — | 2026-04-01 |
| New York | 1.06 | $0.021 loss cost | 2026-10-01 |
| Florida | 1.07 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Montana | 1.07 | — | 2026-07-01 |
| District of Columbia | 1.10 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Massachusetts | 1.10 | — | 2024-07-01 |
| Oklahoma | 1.10 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Illinois | 1.12 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Connecticut | 1.14 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Louisiana | 1.17 | — | 2026-05-01 |
| Hawaii | 1.20 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Pennsylvania | 1.20 | — | 2026-04-01 |
| New Jersey | 1.21 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| Alaska | 1.33 | — | 2026-01-01 |
| California | 1.34 | — | 2026-09-01 |
A filed rate — or a loss cost times your insurer's multiplier — is step 1 of the eight-step rating-bureau premium algorithm. See what your carrier applies after that, or work out premium for code 8871 with your own rate, payroll and experience mod.
Related Class Codes
8810
Clerical Office Employees
Hazard Group: A
8742
Outside Sales Personnel
Hazard Group: B
8820
Attorney - All Employees & Clerical
Hazard Group: A
8803
Auditing, Accounting or Management Consulting
Hazard Group: A
8812
Clerical - Drafting Employees
Hazard Group: A
About Class Code 8871: Scope, Inclusions, and Common Misclassifications
NCCI Class Code 8871 — "Clerical Telecommuter Employees" — is the newest of the four NCCI Standard Exception classifications, created specifically for clerical staff who work from home. It is the code most remote-first employers mean when they search "8871 workers comp code," "wc class code 8871," or "work-from-home workers comp class code." 8871 applies the same exclusively-clerical duties test as 8810 (Clerical Office Employees) — bookkeeping, correspondence, data entry, telephone reception, billing — but for an employee whose office is their home or another location away from any premises the employer owns, leases, or controls.
8871 was established as a new Standard Exception effective January 1, 2021, after the remote-work surge made a home-based clerical class necessary; California's WCIRB adopted it effective January 1, 2021, and the NCCI states phased it in on their own approved filing dates during 2021. Because it is a Standard Exception, 8871 payroll is split out from the business's governing classification and rated separately — at one of the lowest rates in the manual, in the same Hazard Group B band as 8810. This page shows filed 8871 figures for the states that publish them and ranks the other states with a relative cost index, so a remote-staffed employer can see where its states sit before requesting a quote.
What's Included Under Class Code 8871
8871 covers employees whose duties are exclusively clerical and who perform that work principally from home or another non-employer location. The clerical test is identical to 8810: bookkeepers, accounting clerks, data-entry staff, billing and collections clerks, schedulers, customer-support agents handling phone or email, and similar administrative roles working in an area free of the business's operative hazards. The single added requirement is location — the work must be done remotely, away from any premises the employer owns, leases, or controls.
The defining 8871 rule is the more-than-50-percent remote test, and it is applied all-or-nothing rather than split. If the employee performs more than 50% of their work time at home or another non-employer location, their entire clerical payroll is assigned to 8871. If 50% or more of the time is spent at the employer's own location, the entire payroll stays in 8810. This is different from how other Standard Exceptions allocate payroll: 8742 outside salespersons and 7380 drivers can have hours carved out function-by-function, but a clerical telecommuter is wholly in one code or the other based on where the majority of the work happens.
8871 is a small but distinct slice of the manual. NCCI data put clerical telecommuter exposure at roughly 0.5% — about $13 billion — of countrywide payroll for 2020, the year before the code took effect, which is why many carriers and auditors were still learning to apply it correctly in its first policy years. A remote bookkeeper, a work-from-home medical-billing clerk, or a distributed customer-service team that never reports to a company office are the textbook 8871 cases.
8871 vs 8810: The Hybrid-Worker Boundary
The line between 8871 and 8810 is purely the remote-time percentage, measured against the same exclusively-clerical standard. A fully-remote clerical employee who never sets foot in a company office is 8871. An in-office clerical employee is 8810. The hard cases are hybrid workers, and the rule resolves them with the 50% threshold: an employee who works three days at home and two days in the office (60% remote) is entirely 8871; an employee who works two days at home and three in the office (40% remote) is entirely 8810. There is no proportional split between the two clerical codes — the majority location takes the whole payroll.
The clerical purity requirement still governs first. If a remote employee does anything beyond exclusively clerical work — packing and shipping product from home, handling inventory, performing field service, or doing any operative task for the business — they lose Standard Exception eligibility entirely and fall into the governing classification, exactly as an in-office employee would. Remote work does not loosen the clerical test; it only changes which clerical code (8810 vs 8871) applies once the test is met. A remote software developer writing code, for example, is not a clerical telecommuter at all — programming is the governing operation, not clerical office work.
Employers should keep records that show, per employee, both the duties performed and the share of time worked remotely versus on-site, because an auditor decides 8871 from the actual work pattern over the policy period, not from a job title or a remote-work policy on paper. A roster that simply lists everyone as "remote" without time documentation invites reassignment of borderline hybrid staff to 8810 at their higher in-office split, or to the governing class if the clerical purity is not documented.
State Adoption and Independent-Bureau Treatment
Most NCCI states adopted 8871 on their approved filing dates beginning in 2021, applying the countrywide Scopes language. The independent rating-bureau states publish their own classification text and effective dates: California (WCIRB) established its Clerical Telecommuter Employees classification effective January 1, 2021, and New York (NYCIRB), Pennsylvania (PCRB), Delaware (DCRB), New Jersey (NJCRIB), Indiana (ICRB), Michigan (CAOM), and North Carolina (NCRB) each carry their own 8871 or equivalent telecommuter-clerical wording. Always verify the local bureau's scope and effective date before relying on a quoted 8871 rate.
Because 8871 is so new, a few practical cautions apply. Some older policies still classify all clerical staff as 8810 by default and have not been updated to split out telecommuters; a remote-heavy employer may be over-rated until the audit corrects it. Conversely, an employer cannot retroactively move payroll to 8871 for periods before the code's effective date in its state. And the temporary pandemic-era rules that some bureaus issued — allowing payroll for clerical employees temporarily sent home, or for employees paid but not working, to remain in their prior classification — were emergency measures distinct from the permanent 8871 Standard Exception that governs ongoing remote clerical work today.
As with every code on this site, the figures on this page — filed figures from the states that publish them and a relative cost index for the rest — are a benchmark, not a binding quote. The final 8871 premium still depends on payroll, the carrier's loss-cost multiplier, the employer's experience modification factor, state minimum-premium rules, and any audit reassignment between 8871, 8810, or a governing classification.
Sources
- WCIRB California — What You Need to Know About Classification 8871, Clerical Telecommuter Employees (retrieved 2026-06-08)
- NYCIRB Classification Digest — Class 8871 Dashboard (Clerical Telecommuter Employees) (retrieved 2026-06-08)
- NCRB Basic Manual, Rule 1 — Assignment of Classifications (Standard Exceptions, including 8871) (retrieved 2026-06-08)
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is workers' comp class code 8871?
- Class code 8871 (Clerical Telecommuter Employees) is the newest of the four NCCI Standard Exception classifications, created for clerical employees who work more than 50% of the time from home or another location away from the employer's premises. It uses the same exclusively-clerical duties test as 8810 (Clerical Office Employees) — bookkeeping, data entry, billing, phone reception — but applies when the work is done remotely. As a Standard Exception, its payroll is split out from the business's governing class code and rated separately at one of the lowest rates in the manual.
- How much is workers' comp insurance for class code 8871?
- It depends on the state, and only some states publish a per-class figure. For class code 8871, the filed figures per $100 of payroll are: New York $0.021 (loss cost, NYCIRB, effective 2026-10-01); Wisconsin $0.054 (rate, WCRB, effective 2026-10-01). A loss cost is not a rate — your insurer multiplies it by its own loss cost multiplier — and every figure is before your experience modification. For other states this site shows a relative cost index, not a dollar figure. North Dakota, Ohio, Washington and Wyoming are not included. Each is a monopolistic state fund that sets premium on its own basis rather than on an NCCI class-code rate per $100 of payroll, so there is no comparable figure to average or rank.
- What businesses use workers' comp class code 8871?
- Class code 8871 typically applies to Remote administrative teams, Virtual customer support offices, Distributed accounting departments, Remote back-office staff, Work-from-home clerical employees.
- When did class code 8871 take effect?
- 8871 was established as a new Standard Exception effective January 1, 2021. California's WCIRB adopted its Clerical Telecommuter Employees classification effective January 1, 2021, and NCCI states phased the code in on their own approved filing dates during 2021. Payroll for remote clerical work performed before the code's effective date in a given state cannot be retroactively reassigned to 8871.
- What is the difference between class code 8871 and 8810?
- Both 8871 and 8810 are clerical Standard Exceptions with the same exclusively-clerical duties test; the only difference is work location. 8810 (Clerical Office Employees) covers clerical staff working at the employer's premises. 8871 (Clerical Telecommuter Employees) covers clerical staff working more than 50% of the time from home or another non-employer location. The assignment is all-or-nothing: if more than half the time is remote, the entire payroll is 8871; if half or more is on-site, the entire payroll is 8810. There is no proportional split between the two codes.
- Can a remote or work-from-home employee be classified under 8871?
- Only if the work is exclusively clerical and more than 50% of the time is performed away from the employer's location. A remote bookkeeper, billing clerk, scheduler, or phone-support agent who works mostly from home and does no operative work qualifies for 8871. A remote employee who does anything beyond clerical work — shipping product, handling inventory, field service, or programming — is not a clerical telecommuter and is assigned to the governing classification instead, just as they would be in the office.
- What is the workers' comp rate for class code 8871?
- 8871 carries one of the lowest rates in the workers' comp manual because clerical telecommuter work has very low injury frequency — it sits in the same Hazard Group B band as 8810. Actual rates vary by state, and the independent-bureau states (California WCIRB, New York NYCIRB, and others) calculate their own loss costs. Effective premium also depends on the carrier's loss-cost multiplier, the employer's experience modification factor, and state minimum-premium rules. This page shows filed 8871 figures for the states that publish them and ranks the other states with a relative cost index rather than a per-$100 figure.
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