OBJECTIVES This study intends to estimate the life expectancies and loss of life expectancies for workers with permanent occupational disability of upper and lower limbs in Taiwan. METHODS We collected all cases of permanent occupational disability from the database of compensation claim of Bureau of Labor Insurance between 1986 and 2006, which were linked with the national mortality registry to obtain the survival function. We generated survival curve for age- and sex-matched reference population from the life table of the Taiwan general population in 2000 through Monte Carlo method. Lifetime survival of the workers (up to 1000 months) were obtained using linear extrapolation of a logit-transformed curve of the survival ratio between the workers and reference populations. RESULTS The life loss for workers with leg amputation and injury were 51.5±19.7 , and 98.0±16.8 life-months, respectively, while those for workers with arm amputation and injury were 153.9±63.1 and 81.5±29.3, respectively. However, workers with permanent toes and fingers showed no statistically significant loss of life expectancies compared with the general populations. CONCLUSIONS Workers with permanent occupational disability of arm or leg suffered from significant loss of life expectancies, which should be considered for compensation and cost-effectiveness analysis of prevention for these populations.