Painter Workers' Comp Rates (NAICS 238320)
Painter insurance rates
What painter businesses pay for Workers' Comp — filed loss costs summarized from public state-DOI filings across 16 state(s).
Painter businesses price Workers' Compensation off their NCCI class code, and the premium is driven by the filed loss cost each state regulator has approved for that work. This page summarizes what painter operations pay by state; for the full class-by-class filing detail, follow the class-code links below. Painting and wall-covering contractor for residential and commercial interiors and exteriors.
See the full filed loss cost by state
Painter Workers' Comp is priced off NCCI class code:
What coverage a Painter business needs
Most painter operations carry Workers' Compensation — legally required in almost every state once you have employees — plus General Liability for third-party bodily-injury and property-damage claims, and, where vehicles or tools are involved, Commercial Auto and Tools & Equipment coverage. Workers' Comp is usually the largest single line for hands-on trades, because the class code reflects the injury risk of the actual work performed rather than the size of the business.
How the rate is set: your filed loss cost is only the regulator-approved baseline. Your actual premium is that loss cost multiplied by your carrier's loss-cost multiplier (LCM), your experience modifier (which rewards a clean claims history), and your payroll divided by $100. Two painter businesses in the same state can pay very different rates once their experience modifier and carrier are applied to the same filed loss cost.
Beyond the filed loss costs above, the national economics of the commercial lines a painter operation buys shape what carriers ultimately charge. Across the U.S. in 2023, those lines posted (per the NAIC Report on Profitability by Line by State): Workers' Compensation at a 45.1% loss ratio; General Liability at a 60.2% loss ratio; Commercial Auto at a 74.4% loss ratio. Line-level profitability drives the loss-cost multipliers and rates a painter business sees — the market context behind the per-state filings summarized here.
Methodology
Filed loss costs summarized here are drawn from public state-DOI rate filings (via each state's SERFF portal), or public NCCI State Advisory Forum summaries, for the NCCI class code mapped to NAICS 238320. Loss costs are per $100 of payroll before the carrier's loss-cost multiplier; your actual rate depends on your carrier's LCM, experience modifier, and state. No proprietary NCCI manual content is reproduced. See our full sourcing policy for how filings are retrieved and verified.
Business activities classified under NAICS 238320 — Painting and Wall Covering Contractors
- Bridge painting
- Electrostatic painting, on-site, contractors
- Engineering structure (e.g., oil storage tank, water tower) painting
- House painting
- Paint and wallpaper stripping
- Painting and wallpapering
- Painting (except roof) contractors
- Paperhanging and removal contractors
- Paperhanging or removal contractors
- Rustproofing (except automotive)
- Ship painting contractors
- Wall covering or removal contractors
- Wallpaper hanging and removal contractors
- Wallpaper stripping
- Whitewashing contractors
Related
- NCCI class-code lookup — search every code we track
- Workers' Comp insurance cost — median rates + a calculator
- Rate-change tracker — recent filed changes by state
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