Workers' Compensation Rates in Colorado (2026)

State Overview

Colorado uses NCCI class codes and rates, with Pinnacol Assurance serving as the state's largest workers' comp carrier.

Understanding Colorado Workers' Comp Rates

Colorado is an NCCI state with a distinctive market structure. The National Council on Compensation Insurance files advisory loss costs each year with the Colorado Division of Insurance (DOI) inside the Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA); the Insurance Commissioner reviews the filing — supported by an independent actuarial review (most recently by The Davies Group) and a public hearing — and issues an order approving the loss costs before insurers can use them. A separate agency, the Division of Workers' Compensation (DWC) within the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE), administers the benefit system itself: it adjudicates claims, maintains the medical fee schedule, and enforces the coverage mandate.

Effective January 1, 2026, the Commissioner approved an NCCI-filed loss-cost decrease of 6.9% — the 12th consecutive annual reduction in Colorado, driven by a continued decline in workplace injury frequency. The DOI has reported a cumulative average loss-cost decrease of roughly 56.8% since 2015. What makes Colorado unusual is the presence of Pinnacol Assurance, a state-chartered (but politically independent and competitively priced) insurer that historically writes a large share of the state's policies alongside private carriers — Colorado is competitive, not monopolistic. The 6.9% is a statewide average; individual class codes moved more or less, and your actual premium also reflects your insurer's loss-cost multiplier (LCM), experience modification factor, and schedule credits or debits. The rates table on this page reflects Colorado-approved loss costs in effect under the January 1, 2026 order.

How to find a Colorado workers' comp class code from a job description

There is no Colorado workers' comp class code for a job title. NCCI files the classifications used in Colorado, and the NCCI rules are what an auditor applies, and what gets classified is the employer's business — not the separate employments, occupations or operations inside it. "Machinist", "CNC operator", "general construction labor" and "data entry" are therefore work that sits inside whichever classification describes the business, not values you can look up on their own.

NCCI publishes Colorado's classifications in the Basic Manual for Workers Compensation and Employers Liability Insurance, whose Classification codes section carries Colorado's state-specific classification phraseology (no dated edition is adopted by name in Colorado — what governs is the set of Colorado pages NCCI most recently filed and the Commissioner of Insurance approved. NCCI filed its Colorado Advisory Loss Costs and Rating Values Filing on July 30, 2025 under § 10-4-405, C.R.S.; the Commissioner determined under § 10-4-406(3.5) that an independent actuary should review it, held the public hearing § 10-4-406(2) calls for on October 15, 2025, and approved the filing as filed by Order No. O-26-010 on October 27, 2025, effective January 1, 2026 with an average loss cost change of -6.9%. Workers' compensation is a prior-approval line here: Colorado Insurance Regulation 5-1-10, Section 5.B.1 (3 CCR 702-5) makes every filing for a Type I line require the Commissioner's prior approval, and Section 5.B.3 then has each carrier file its own loss cost multiplier on top of what NCCI filed). To confirm the classification for a specific business, use the Division of Insurance's own workers' compensation page, which posts each year's NCCI Colorado filing with the A-sheets that print a loss cost against every four-digit class code, next to the Commissioner's order approving them, published by the Colorado Division of Insurance rather than by NCCI — that is the filed authority for Colorado, and a code quoted from another state's manual is not. Colorado is the rare state that puts the classification argument in front of a standing board rather than a regulator alone. C.R.S. § 8-55-101 creates the workers' compensation classification appeals board inside the Division of Insurance to hear grievances brought by employers against insurers and against Pinnacol Assurance over the calculation of experience modification factors and classification assignment decisions. Five voting members decide it — two from the insurance side and three private employers, at least one of whom must represent the construction industry — and the sixth member is a nonvoting employee of the workers' compensation rating organization who serves as the board's technical resource and, under § 8-55-103(2)(b), as its secretary, which is why Division Bulletin B-5.02 tells a policyholder to send the appeal care of NCCI in Boca Raton. The sequence is fixed. Under § 8-44-108 the employer asks the insurer in writing within thirty working days of the policy anniversary or of notice of a classification change, and the insurer answers in writing within thirty days. Under § 8-55-102 the employer then has thirty days after exhausting the insurer's own review procedure to file written notice with the board, which must schedule a hearing within thirty days of receiving it. Under § 8-55-104 the board's decision is final unless the employer, the insurance company or Pinnacol gives the Commissioner written notice of appeal within thirty days, and the employer may hold the disputed premium in abeyance until the decision, paying one percent of it per month in interest if the appeal is lost.

Colorado has two organizations classifying employers and one board sitting over both. NCCI files the classifications and the loss costs, but Pinnacol Assurance — a political subdivision of the state created by C.R.S. § 8-45-101 that operates as a domestic mutual insurance company — is separately empowered by § 8-45-105 to classify the places of employment of the employers it insures according to the nature of their business and the probable hazard, and § 8-45-117(1)(b) contemplates it using the NCCI pure premium rates the Commissioner has already approved while charging different pure premium rates to employers who meet its board's requirements. That is why § 8-55-101 names Pinnacol alongside private insurers as something an employer can be aggrieved by, and it is the distinction to hold on to: the classification system is NCCI's, the carrier applying it to a Colorado business may be a state-created one. Two more things a multi-state employer will not expect. Colorado bounds how far a single classification can move in one year — the filing applies swing limits set at the average change for the industry group the classification belongs to, plus or minus fifteen percent, so a Colorado code's loss cost does not track its own experience freely. And the residual market is not carved out of the numbers: the Division's independent actuary recorded that NCCI makes no adjustment for Pinnacol's higher loss experience relative to the private market, so Colorado's advisory loss costs carry the state carrier's experience inside them.

the Division of Insurance's own workers' compensation page, which posts each year's NCCI Colorado filing with the A-sheets that print a loss cost against every four-digit class code, next to the Commissioner's order approving them (official Colorado lookup)

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