Cite as: 515 U. S. 291 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
ployee and the employee's wage-earning capacity thereafter in the same employment or otherwise, payable during the continuance of partial disability." LHWCA § 8(c)(21), 33 U. S. C. § 908(c)(21). For these nonscheduled injuries, the type at issue in this case, loss of wage-earning capacity is an element of the claimant's case, for without the statutory presumption that accompanies scheduled injuries, a claimant is not "disabled" unless he proves "incapacity because of injury to earn the wages." LHWCA § 2(10), 33 U. S. C. § 902(10). See Bath Iron Works, supra, at 156; Potomac Elec. Power Co., supra, at 269-270. These two sections make it clear that compensation, as an initial matter, is predicated on loss of wage-earning capacity, and that such compensation should continue only "during the continuance of partial disability," LHWCA § 8(c)(21), 33 U. S. C. § 908(c)(21), i. e., during the continuance of the "incapacity . . . to earn the wages," LHWCA § 2(10), 33 U. S. C. § 902(10). Section 22 accommodates this statutory requirement by providing for modification of an award on the ground of "a change in conditions." 33 U. S. C. § 922.
Rambo's insistence on what seems to us a " 'narrowly technical and impractical construction' " of this phrase, O'Keeffe, supra, at 255 (quoting Luckenbach S. S. Co. v. Norton, 106 F. 2d 137, 138 (CA3 1939)), does more than disregard the plain language of §§ 22, 2(10), and 8(c)(21). It also is inconsistent with the structure and purpose of the LHWCA. Like most other workers' compensation schemes, the LHWCA does not compensate physical injury alone but the disability produced by that injury. See LHWCA §§ 3(a), 8, 33 U. S. C. §§ 903(a), 908; see also 1C A. Larson, Law of Workmen's Compensation § 57.11 (1994). Disability under the LHWCA, defined in terms of wage-earning capacity, LHWCA § 2(10), is in essence an economic, not a medical, concept. Cf. 3 Larson, supra, § 81.31(e), p. 15-1150 (1995) ("[D]isability in the compensation sense has an economic as well as a medical component"). It may be ascertained for
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