Worklife Expectancy

When it is used

Worklife expectancy is used in virtually every forensic economic analysis of lost earnings or earning capacity, and in wrongful death matters to project the decedent's expected work years.

Step-by-step

1. Identify the claimant's current age, sex, education, and labor force status
2. Select an appropriate published worklife table (e.g., Skoog-Ciecka-Krueger)
3. Apply the active-to-inactive transition probabilities to the projection horizon
4. Where injury severity is documented, consider published adjustments for reduced worklife

Data sources

• Skoog-Ciecka-Krueger worklife tables
• BLS Current Population Survey
• Markov-process worklife literature
• Severity-specific worklife literature (spinal cord injury (SCI), traumatic brain injury (TBI), etc.)

How the expectancy is derived

Worklife expectancy is computed, not assumed. The published tables rest on an increment-decrement model: at each age a person is in one of two labor force states, active (working or looking for work) or inactive, and moves between them with probabilities estimated from Current Population Survey respondents observed at two points a year apart. Death is the third exit. Summing, over every future age, the probability of being alive and active gives the expected number of active years remaining for a person who starts in a given state at a given age. The result differs from the years to a fixed retirement age in two ways: it counts the spells of inactivity that population data show before final withdrawal, and it credits the years many people keep working past a conventional retirement age.

The tables report the expectancy by sex, age, educational attainment and initial state, because each of those changes the transition probabilities. The initial state matters most for someone out of the labor force at the valuation date: an inactive person of the same age and education has a lower expectancy than an active one, since the model requires a return to activity before any active year can accrue. The extended tables also report percentile points and measures of the shape of the distribution, so a report can state where a figure sits in the distribution rather than only the mean.

The tables and their vintage

The tables the forensic economics literature most often cites are the Skoog, Ciecka and Krueger extended tables published in the Journal of Forensic Economics (Skoog et al., 2011), estimated from the Current Population Survey years the authors identify (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, n.d.). The Bureau of Labor Statistics no longer publishes worklife tables of its own; the forensic literature has carried the method forward. Because participation patterns move over time, the edition matters: a report names the edition, the stratum used (sex, age, education, initial state) and the value read from it, so the opposing expert can open the same page. Where a newer edition exists, the report says why the edition it used was chosen. Mortality is already inside a worklife expectancy, which is why it is shorter than the life expectancy read from the national life tables for the same age and sex (Arias et al., 2025).

How it enters the damages period

The expectancy sets the horizon of the earnings projection, and two conventions are in use. The first treats the expectancy as a number of years and projects the loss to the age at which those years run out. The second applies the year-by-year probability of being active to each future year's earnings, so the projected loss tapers as the probability falls rather than stopping at a boundary. The second is closer to the model; the first is easier to follow at trial, and a report using it should say so. Either way each year's figure is then reduced to present value, so the worklife table and the discount rate together decide how much a distant year contributes.

In an injury case the horizon applies to the pre-injury projection. Whether the post-injury projection uses the same horizon or a shorter one is a separate question: a reduced worklife after a documented severe injury is supported in the literature for some conditions, and the vocational opinion on part-time or intermittent participation supplies the other input. A report that reduces the post-injury wage and the post-injury worklife for the same restriction states the basis for each, because counting one limitation twice overstates the loss. In a wrongful death case the decedent's worklife bounds the support and household services projections in the same way.

Limitations

Worklife tables reflect average transitions across the population and may not capture case-specific factors such as unusual health status, industry-specific retirement patterns, or late-career skill obsolescence.

Admissibility

The Skoog-Ciecka-Krueger tables and predecessors are widely accepted in forensic economics (Skoog et al., 2011).