The WSIB cut the average premium to $1.18. If you run a salon, your class rate went up a cent

Ontario's average WSIB premium for 2027 is $1.18 for every $100 you pay your staff, down from $1.23 this year. That is the number in the headlines. The number that goes on your bill is your class rate, moved up or down by your own claims history, and the class rates the WSIB published on the same day did not all fall. Leisure and hospitality, which is where cafes, restaurants and gyms sit, slipped from $0.90 to $0.88. Ambulatory health care went from $1.59 to $1.58. Other services, the class that holds hair salons and barbershops, went from $1.28 to $1.29. This page puts the three class rates our readers pay side by side, shows what a cent is worth on a real payroll, explains the part of the bill you can actually move, and tells you which three lines to read when your statement appears in November.

Find your letter first

The WSIB does not charge every Ontario business the same rate. It sorts businesses into classes by what they do, using the two-digit industry code (NAICS) that describes their main activity, and each class gets its own rate. Your own rate is then set above or below that class rate depending on your claims record, which we come to below.

Here are the classes most owner-run service businesses fall into, with the 2026 rate and the 2027 rate the WSIB published on 22 October, both per $100 of insurable earnings:

• Class O, Leisure and hospitality (NAICS 71 and 72: cafes, restaurants, bars, gyms, fitness studios): $0.90 in 2026, $0.88 in 2027.
• Class P, Other services (NAICS 81: hair salons, barbershops, nail and beauty salons): $1.28 in 2026, $1.29 in 2027.
• Class N1, Ambulatory health care (NAICS 621: offices of physicians, dentists and other health practitioners): $1.59 in 2026, $1.58 in 2027.

If you are an aesthetic or medical spa, your class depends on how the WSIB coded your main activity when you registered: a clinic run around health practitioners usually sits in N1, a business coded as personal care sits in P. Your premium rate statement names the class. If you have never looked, that is the first thing to check.

Across all 35 classes, 30 went down and five went up, and Class P is one of the five. The average fell by five cents while the small service classes barely moved, because the heavy-payroll classes, construction, manufacturing, wholesale and public administration, fell by more than that.

What a cent is worth on your payroll

Take a business with $300,000 of insurable earnings, which is roughly six to eight full-time staff in these trades. Put your own payroll figure in place of it.

• Cafe or gym, Class O: $300,000 at $0.90 is $2,700 for 2026. At $0.88 it is $2,640 for 2027. You save $60.
• Salon or barbershop, Class P: $300,000 at $1.28 is $3,840. At $1.29 it is $3,870. You pay $30 more.
• Clinic, Class N1: $300,000 at $1.59 is $4,770. At $1.58 it is $4,740. You save $30.

So on the class line alone, the 2027 change is the price of a few coffees either way. The WSIB's "$160 million left in the economy" is real, but it is mostly leaving in large payrolls in other classes. For a small service business the headline is not where the money is.

Where the money actually is: your risk band

This is the part most owners have never had explained. Inside each class the WSIB runs a ladder of risk bands, each step about five per cent apart in premium. Your business sits on a rung of that ladder set by its own claims experience over the six years before the rate year, with the most recent three years weighted more heavily. Good experience moves you down the ladder, below the class rate. Claims move you up.

Two rules make this manageable rather than terrifying:

• You can only move three bands a year, up or down, about 15 per cent of your premium, until you reach the rate your record points to. A bad year does not double your bill in January. It raises it in steps, and a clean run brings it back down in steps.
• Small payrolls lean on the class. The WSIB blends your own experience with the class average, and the smaller and less predictable your claims history, the more of your rate comes from the class and the less from you. At the smallest end only a few per cent of the rate is your own record. That is why the class rate matters so much to a five-chair salon, and why one claim does not move a tiny business the way it moves a 40-person one.

Put those together for the $300,000 salon above. The class moved its bill by $30. Three risk bands move it by roughly $580, in either direction, every year until it settles. If you want a number that is worth managing, it is the second one. A single lost-time injury on a stylist this year stays in your review window for six rate-setting cycles, and in the heavily weighted recent-years part of it for the first three.

If you have had coverage for less than 11 months of the review period you are a new employer and simply pay the class rate. From then on, your record starts to count.

The November statement: three lines to read

The WSIB says your 2027 premium rate will be available exclusively online from November. Exclusively online means no paper statement, so if you have never set up online services, do it before then or you will be running January payroll at a rate you have not seen.

When it appears, read these three lines and nothing else first:

• Your class. If it says P and you think you run a clinic, or vice versa, that is a conversation with the WSIB about your classification, not a fact of life. The gap between N1 and P is 29 cents, or $870 a year on a $300,000 payroll.
• Your risk band and your projected rate. The statement shows where you are and where your record says you are heading. If your projected rate is below your current one, you are on the way down and the three-band limit is what is slowing the saving. If it is above, you know now, not in 2028.
• Your insurable earnings. Premiums are charged on earnings up to a ceiling of $126,700 per person for 2027, up from $121,700. For most staff in these trades it never bites, but if you pay yourself or a manager above it through payroll, the earnings over the ceiling are not insurable and should not be in the base.

Across the Rockies, for contrast

British Columbia went the other way on the same question. WorkSafeBC published its 2027 rates on 16 October: the average base rate stays at $1.55 per $100 of assessable payroll for the tenth year running, and it says 48 per cent of BC employers see their industry base rate go up, 30 per cent see it fall and 22 per cent see no change. BC's average is held down by returning surplus, about $960 million of it for 2027 according to its July announcement. Ontario has been doing the same with rebates and rate cuts for several years. In both provinces, the line to watch is your own industry rate and your own experience, not the provincial average that makes the press release.

What this does to the price of your business

Workers' compensation is a line a buyer's accountant reads twice. The premium itself goes into the cost base that produces your seller's discretionary earnings, so a rate that is drifting up through the risk bands is a cost that is still rising on the day you sell, and a buyer will price the direction, not just the current figure. More than that, your claims history is a six-year record of how safely the business runs without you, and it transfers to the buyer with the registration. Three clean years, a rate below the class and a projected rate still heading down is evidence of a business that is managed. A statement showing you three bands above class is a question in due diligence that you will have to answer with a story, and buyers discount stories.

The useful habit is small. Read the statement in November, write the class, the band and the projected rate into the same file as your other fixed costs, and compare it year on year. It takes ten minutes, it tells you whether your real premium is moving towards or away from the headline, and it is exactly the kind of record a buyer pays for.