In addition to medical and income benefits, the third type of benefit you are entitled to receive is permanent partial disability or “PPD.”  This benefit seeks to recompense an employee who has suffered a permanent in duration, but partial in quality, disability as a result of his injuries.  The employee is given a percentage disability rating by his doctor based on certain impairment tables published by the American Medical Association.  For instance, if an employee loses a finger, the tables may call for a 3% permanent partial disability rating to the arm as a whole.  This percentage is applied to a number of weeks set by statute — in the case of an arm it is 225 weeks –  and then multiplied by the weekly income benefit or “comp rate” of the employee, which yields a figure to which the employee is entitled.  In theory, PPD does not compensate for the loss of the finger.  It compensates the employee for his future inability to earn wages due to the injury. For this reason, an employee who earns $20 an hour will be entitled to recover twice as much for the same loss suffered by another employee who earns $10 an hour.