An undocumented worker's economic claim is built from the same components as any other injury or death claim, lost earnings and earning capacity, fringe benefits, household services, and future care, but two questions that are settled in the ordinary case are open in this one. The first is evidentiary: the earnings history is often paid in cash, reported under another name, or not reported at all, so the base has to be proved from records other than the wage forms. The second is legal: whether the future loss is measured against the wages the person was earning in the United States or against the wages available in the country of origin, and that question belongs to the venue, not to the economist. This guide explains how the earnings base is documented when the usual forms are missing, how the two labor market paths are built, why the report presents the loss under each rather than choosing, how taxes, fringe benefits, household services, and the worklife horizon are treated, and what each side should expect to see in a report.
An economic damages claim for an undocumented worker has the same structure as any personal injury or wrongful death analysis: the earnings the person would have earned but for the event, less the earnings the person can still earn, plus the fringe benefits, household services, and care costs that follow from the injury, each reduced to present value. What differs is the evidence beneath the earnings base and the law that governs which earnings count. In most claims the wage forms and the tax returns fix the base and the dispute is over how to project it; here the base itself may have to be proved from other records, and the projection may have to be built along two labor market paths because the venue has not decided, or has decided differently from its neighbors, which one measures the loss.
The economist's role does not change. The report measures the loss under each set of assumptions the record and the venue support, states the source of every input, and leaves the legal question of which path applies to counsel and the court. A report that silently adopts one path, or that treats the person's status as a reason to apply a discount the published data do not contain, has made a legal judgment it is not qualified to make, and that is the first thing the opposing economist will say about it.
The earnings base in an ordinary claim comes from the wage forms, the tax returns, and the pay records, and the lost earnings guide describes how they are reconciled. An undocumented worker may have some of those records, filed under an individual taxpayer identification number or under a number that was not the person's own, or none of them. Where the records exist they are used, with the report noting whose name and number they carry and reconciling them to the other evidence; a return filed under another identity still records what was earned, and the tax reporting question is separate from the economic one.
Where the forms do not exist, the base is built from what does. Employer pay records and the testimony of the employer or a foreman establish the rate and the hours; bank deposits and remittance receipts establish the cash actually received over a period, as the pay stubs post explains for the partial record; the person's own account of the rate, the hours, and the seasons worked is tested against those records and against the published wage data for the occupation and the area. The report states which records support each element of the base and how far the figure rests on testimony alone. A base that rests on testimony the records do not corroborate is presented as such, and the defense economist will test it against the published wage for the occupation.
The question that distinguishes this claim from every other is which labor market measures the future loss. One path projects the earnings the person was earning in the United States, on the ground that the loss is measured by what the person was in fact earning and would have continued to earn. The other projects the earnings the person could lawfully earn, which in the ordinary case means the wages of the person's occupation in the country of origin, on the ground that the law should not award earnings the person had no legal right to receive. Venues differ: some direct one path, some leave the question to the fact finder on the evidence, some admit evidence of status only when the defense can show a likelihood that the person would have been removed, and some exclude the evidence altogether for the earnings question. The lost earnings and earning capacity service describes the general analysis each path is built on.
The economist does not pick a path. The report builds the loss under each one the venue leaves open, with the inputs stated, so that whichever the court directs or the fact finder adopts has a figure attached to it. The United States path is built from the person's own earnings history and the published wage data for the occupation and the area. The country-of-origin path is built from the published wage data for the same occupation in that country, converted to United States dollars at the rate the report states and adjusted for the difference in price levels where the data allow, and the report is explicit that this path assumes a departure the record may or may not support and a date for it. Where the venue has settled the question, the report follows the venue and presents the alternative only on request, as it does in any other matter where the venue directs a convention. In a personal injury matter venued in California, or anywhere, counsel should settle which paths the report must carry before it is written.
Whether the loss is measured before or after income tax is the venue's rule, as it is in every earnings claim, and the report applies the venue's convention regardless of whether the person's earnings were reported. Where the venue requires after-tax figures, the economist computes the tax on the base as if it had been reported, and says so; the alternative, treating unreported earnings as untaxed and therefore larger, rewards the non-reporting and is not a measure of what the person would have kept. Where the earnings were reported and taxes and payroll contributions were withheld, the record shows it, and the fact that contributions were made toward benefits the person could not collect is a matter for counsel rather than an adjustment the economist makes.
Fringe benefits in such a claim are usually small, because the employment was often informal and carried no employer-paid health coverage or retirement contribution, and the report values only the benefits the record shows were provided, under the fringe benefits method. Household services are a different matter. The replacement cost of the work the person did for the household is measured from time-use data and the local wage for the replacement work, and it does not depend on the person's status in the labor market at all; the household services analysis runs the same way for every household and is frequently a larger share of the total in this kind of claim than in others.
The horizon for the earnings projection comes from the published worklife tables by age, sex, and education, as the worklife expectancy method explains, and the tables do not carry a status dimension. The report applies the table value for the person's characteristics and adjusts it only for facts in the record, in either direction: a history of continuous full-time work in physically demanding occupations supports the table value or more, while the defense may argue for a shorter horizon on the United States path if the record supports a likelihood of departure. Either adjustment is stated as an assumption with the evidence for it, not folded into the table value.
The earnings profile follows the occupation. Many claims of this kind involve construction, agriculture, food service, and other occupations in which earnings rise early and flatten, and the age-earnings profile method describes how the published series shape the stream. A projection that applies a general wage growth rate to a base that already sits at the occupation's plateau overstates the loss, and one that applies the occupation's profile to a person with a documented path to a trade license or supervisory role understates it; the record decides, and the report shows the choice.
Where the event was fatal, the analysis takes the form of a wrongful death claim: the decedent's earnings and benefits over the worklife, less the personal consumption deduction, as the support the dependents lost, plus the household services and, where the framework allows, the other components the venue recognizes. The two labor market paths carry through to the support analysis, since the support depends on the earnings, and the report presents the dependents' loss under each. The dependents themselves are often in the country of origin, which changes nothing in the method and one thing in the inputs: the remittances the decedent sent are the direct record of the support actually provided, and the bank and transfer records that document them become the center of the file.
The personal consumption deduction is built for the household as it stood, which for a worker living apart from the dependents and remitting a share of earnings is a household of one in the United States with a dependent household abroad. The report explains how the deduction was constructed for that arrangement rather than applying a table built for a co-resident household without comment, and the personal consumption method describes the tables and their limits.
Each side should expect a report that separates the evidentiary question from the legal one and answers only the first. On the evidence, the report lists every record that supports the earnings base, states how far the base rests on testimony, and reconciles the testimony to the published wage for the occupation and the area. On the law, the report presents the loss under each labor market path the venue leaves open, with the departure assumption and its date stated for the country-of-origin path, and shows the fringe benefits, household services, taxes, and horizon under each. A report that carries one path only, in a venue that has not directed it, has decided the case's central legal question in a schedule.
The defense economist's work is the same analysis from the other side: testing the base against the records and the published wage, building the country-of-origin path where the venue admits it and the plaintiff's report omits it, and checking that the household services and the consumption deduction were built for the household that actually existed. Where the plaintiff's report has applied a growth profile or a horizon the record does not support, or has valued benefits the employment never provided, the defense report shows the correction and its effect. The reading guide explains how either side takes the other's report apart, and in this kind of claim the schedule to read first is the one that states which labor market each figure assumes.
Yes, from the other records of what was earned: the employer's pay records and testimony about the rate and the hours, bank deposits and remittance receipts that show the cash received over a period, and the published wage data for the occupation and the area, against which the person's own account is tested. The report states how far the base rests on documents and how far on testimony, and the opposing economist will test the testimony against the published wage.
No. That is a legal question the venue answers, and venues differ. The economist builds the loss under each path the venue leaves open, the person's own United States earnings and the published wage for the occupation in the country of origin, with the departure assumption stated for the second, so that whichever path the court directs or the fact finder adopts has a figure attached to it.
Not the household services, which are measured from time-use data and the local replacement wage for every household in the same way. The personal consumption deduction in a death claim is built for the household as it actually stood, and where the worker lived alone and remitted support to dependents abroad, the report constructs the deduction for that arrangement rather than applying a table built for a co-resident household without comment.
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