Partial Disability

What partial disability means

Partial disability, in the Saudi work injury rules, is a permanent reduction in an injured worker’s capacity to work that falls short of total disability. Its degree is not an estimate the establishment makes, and it is not a description that a doctor composes freely. Article 136 of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) refers the degrees of permanent total disability and permanent partial disability to the disability percentage schedule (جدول دليل نسب العجز) provided for in the Social Insurance Law (نظام التأمينات الاجتماعية).

The schedule is not part of the Labor Law, and we do not reproduce it. A percentage for partial disability therefore comes from the schedule, and a figure quoted without reference to the schedule has no source behind it.

The injury behind partial disability: Articles 134 and 135 of the Labor Law

Before the degree is discussed, the injury it attaches to has to be settled. Article 134 of the Labor Law treats an injury as a work injury according to what the Social Insurance Law provides, so the definition is borrowed rather than standalone. Two further rules follow in Article 134 of the Labor Law: occupational diseases rank as work injuries, and the date of the first medical observation of the disease ranks as the date of injury. The second rule gives a disease that emerges slowly a date on which a calculation can be based; without it, that date would be hard to fix.

Article 135 of the Labor Law deals with relapse and with any complication arising from it. It treats them as part of the injury, and applies to them, as regards aid and treatment, the rules that apply to the original injury. The qualifier is deliberate: the text equates the two in aid and treatment, and does not extend the equivalence to every rule. Quoting Article 135 of the Labor Law without that qualifier widens it.

Article 136 of the Labor Law refers out twice: occupational diseases to the occupational diseases schedule (جدول الأمراض المهنية), and degrees of disability to the disability percentage schedule. Both schedules sit in the Social Insurance Law, not in the Labor Law.

Treatment comes before partial disability compensation: Article 133 of the Labor Law

The employer’s first obligation is treatment, not a sum of money. Article 133 of the Labor Law requires the employer, when a worker suffers a work injury or an occupational disease, to treat the worker and bear all the necessary costs, directly or indirectly, including hospital stay, medical examinations and laboratory tests, radiology, prosthetic devices and the cost of transport to the places of treatment.

Those costs are not part of partial disability compensation, and they are not deducted from it. An employer that totals what it spent on treatment and then counts it as an advance against the compensation is combining two separate obligations set in two different provisions.

How partial disability becomes an amount: Article 138 of the Labor Law

Article 138 of the Labor Law sets two cases, and the second is built on the first:

• Permanent total disability, or death. The injured worker, or those entitled through them, are entitled to compensation equal to the worker’s wage for three years, with a minimum of SAR 54,000.
• Permanent partial disability. The injured worker is entitled to compensation equal to the percentage of that disability, assessed under the approved disability percentage schedule, multiplied by the value of the compensation for permanent total disability.

Partial disability therefore has no amount of its own. It is the product of two factors: a percentage taken from a schedule, and a value taken from the first case. Change either factor and the whole result changes.

The wage in both cases is the actual wage (الأجر الفعلي). Article 138 of the Labor Law says “wage” without a qualifier, and Article 2 of the Labor Law provides that the wage, where unqualified, means the actual wage. Both limbs of Article 138 of the Labor Law, the total and the partial, therefore run on the actual wage as Article 2 of the Labor Law defines it.

The SAR 54,000 minimum is the figure printed in the consolidated text of the Labor Law published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, as read in September 2026, in the edition that incorporates the amendments of Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H. That consolidated text carries no amendment footnote on Article 138 of the Labor Law. We have not established whether any later instrument has revised the figure, so we cite it with its source and edition.

A worked example of partial disability under Article 138 of the Labor Law

The calculation takes two steps, and skipping the first produces an error in the second. Take a worker whose actual wage is SAR 6,000 a month, and whose permanent partial disability is assessed under the disability percentage schedule at a percentage assumed to be 20% to show the order of the steps, not taken from the schedule:

• Step one, the value of permanent total disability compensation. Three years’ wage: 6,000 × 36 months = SAR 216,000.
• Step two, the percentage applied to that value. 216,000 × 20% = SAR 43,200.

One error is to apply the percentage to a single year’s wage, which gives SAR 14,400, a third of the amount due. Another is to apply it to one month’s wage, which gives SAR 1,200. Article 138 of the Labor Law ties the percentage to the value of the compensation in the first case, not to the wage taken alone, and the amount due on that reading is three times the amount on the annual reading.

Both figures in the example rest on two assumptions: that the percentage is 20%, and that the worker’s actual wage is SAR 6,000. Neither can be carried over to a particular case. The SAR 54,000 minimum does not change this result, because three years’ wage in the example is SAR 216,000, above the minimum. Where three years’ wage falls below SAR 54,000, Article 138 of the Labor Law does not state expressly whether the minimum set for the first case carries into the multiplication in the second, and we do not decide that question.

Partial disability and the passing of time: Article 137 of the Labor Law

A case can begin as temporary incapacity and then change category by operation of the text. Article 137 of the Labor Law opens with a financial limb that is lost when only its final sentence is quoted. A worker temporarily unable to work because of a work injury is entitled to financial aid equal to their full wage for sixty days, and then to an amount equal to 75% of their wage for the whole period of treatment. The wage behind both figures is again the actual wage; the word “full” fixes the proportion, not the type of wage. Article 137 of the Labor Law also states that the employer has no right to recover what it paid the injured worker during that year, meaning the year of treatment after which, as set out below, the injury is deemed a total disability. What is paid during temporary incapacity is not an advance on later compensation.

Article 137 of the Labor Law further provides that if the treatment period reaches one year, or it is medically determined that recovery is improbable and the worker’s health does not allow them to work, the injury is deemed a total disability, the contract is terminated, and the worker is compensated for the injury.

One of the two routes to that change is therefore the passing of time, not an assessment of degree. An employer that waits only for the medical condition to settle before classifying the disability has overlooked half the provision. Article 137 of the Labor Law was amended by Royal Decree M/46 dated 5/6/1436H.

When the employer owes no partial disability compensation: Article 139 of the Labor Law

Article 139 of the Labor Law releases the employer from the obligations in Articles 133, 137 and 138 of the Labor Law if any of the following is proved:

• that the worker deliberately injured themselves;
• that the injury occurred because of deliberate misconduct (سوء سلوك مقصود) on the worker’s part;
• that the worker refused, without legitimate reason, to present themselves to a doctor, or to accept treatment by the doctor the employer assigned.

What the list leaves out also matters: ordinary negligence by the worker is not on it. The threshold in the first two cases is deliberate intent, not carelessness and not a breach of an instruction. Reading Article 139 of the Labor Law as a release whenever the worker had a hand in the injury widens a provision built on proof and intent together. The release covers all three Articles at once, so it removes the duty of treatment as well as the compensation.

Partial disability and previous employers: Article 140 of the Labor Law

With an occupational disease, the current employer may not be the only one involved. Article 140 of the Labor Law provides that the liability of previous employers for whom the injured worker worked is determined in the light of the treating physician’s medical report. Those previous employers are bound to pay the compensation under Article 138 of the Labor Law, each in proportion to the period the worker spent in their service, provided that the industries or professions they carry on are ones that give rise to the disease the worker contracted.

The apportionment is by time, and it rests on two conditions together: the treating physician’s report, and the previous employer’s activity being one that gives rise to that particular disease. Article 140 of the Labor Law provides for no equal split and no allocation to the last employer alone.

Reporting the injury behind a partial disability: Article 141 of the Labor Law

Article 141 of the Labor Law provides that the procedures for reporting work injuries are set by a decision of the Minister, and the Labor Law sets no reporting deadline itself. In the sources we reviewed, we did not find a standalone ministerial decision. Article 28 of the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية), which implements Article 141 of the Labor Law, sets a procedure for one case only: an establishment that is not subject to the occupational hazards branch of the social insurance system. In that case the employer reports the injury to the competent labour office within a week of learning of it. The office decides whether it is a work injury, refers the injured worker to a government hospital where there is no medical report fixing the percentage of disability or where either party contests the report, and sets the compensation according to the percentage in the medical report. If either party rejects what the office sets, the matter is referred to the competent labour courts.

The one week step applies only within that scope. For an establishment inside the occupational hazards branch, the reporting route is the one set under the social insurance system, which we have not reviewed, so we state no reporting period for it. The same step is set out under health and safety officer, the role that can follow up injuries inside an establishment.

Article 132 of the Labor Law comes before any partial disability calculation

Article 132 of the Labor Law provides that the work injury chapter does not apply to establishments subject to the occupational hazards branch of the Social Insurance Law, and Articles 137 and 138 of the Labor Law sit inside that chapter. Presenting Articles 137 and 138 of the Labor Law as what every injured worker in the private sector receives answers a case that may not be the reader’s.

The scope of that branch is set in the Social Insurance Law, not in the Labor Law. The social insurance system is outlined under social insurance, and its contribution rates under GOSI contributions.

The sources we reviewed do not include the text of the disability percentage schedule, so we do not state its percentages, how they are applied, or who assesses them within the branch. We have not reviewed the conditions on which the occupational hazards branch pays a worker with permanent partial disability, the form or amount of that payment, or the periods for claiming it. We found no rule on reassessing the degree of disability after the condition settles or changes, if the Social Insurance Law contains one. For those three questions the General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI) is the direct reference. For an establishment inside the branch, the practical question about partial disability can end at an amount determined under the social insurance system, and that amount lies outside the Labor Law provisions set out above.

The Labor Law provisions relied on are those of the consolidated text published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development. Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H, in force since 19 February 2025, did not amend Articles 132 to 141 of the Labor Law.

Before a partial disability percentage is applied

An explanation of the statutory text is not a medical assessment. An order of steps can prevent errors at the outset: first establish whether the establishment sits inside the occupational hazards branch, then which body assesses the degree, then take the percentage from its schedule rather than from a commentary. The percentage is an input to a multiplication, so an error in it carries through the whole amount.

This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.

Related terms

• Social Insurance (GOSI)
• Health and Safety Officer
• Hazard Pay
• Safety Committee
• Settlement of Entitlements