The Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau (WCIRB) released a study that looked at California’s workers’ comp claims by region and found that the Los Angeles area accounts for a lot of the indemnity claims and litigious claims in California’s workers’ comp. The “2016 Study of Geographic Differences in California Workers’ Compensation Claim Costs” is the most recent edition of the annual study.

The state was divided into 19 different regions and researchers controlled for wage variance and the industrial mix of the state. There are an estimated 800,000 injured workers in the state receiving medical and wage replacement benefits. Even though the Los Angeles/Long Beach region is smallest in size it is densely populated and their indemnity claims account for almost 40 percent of their total claims. In other regions that is much lower, in the Silicon Valley region indemnity claims account for around 30 percent.

Los Angeles and the Long Beach region have higher indemnity claim frequencies than other regions, and have more cases that involve litigation. They also account for the highest share of cumulative trauma claims, at 8.3 percent, while the state’s average is 5.2 percent. That is up from last year, when the Los Angeles area’s cumulative trauma and occupational disease claims made up 6.1 percent of total claims and the state’s average was 4.8 percent. The permanent disability ratings in the northern regions of California were found to be higher than the central and southern regions where Los Angeles is located.

WCIRB California read more on the study here