Financial Tools

Employee Cost Calculator

A salary is never what a person costs. Employer payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, workers compensation and benefits sit on top, and the total is what the work has to be priced against.

The role

Annual Salary

Hours Paid Per Year (2080 is full time)

Payroll taxes and insurance

Social Security Wage Base (re indexed each year by the SSA)

Federal Unemployment Rate (6.0% less the state credit)

Federal Unemployment Wage Base

State Unemployment Rate (your state, your claims history)

State Unemployment Wage Base

Workers Compensation (percent of payroll, by class code)

Benefits and everything else

Benefits (health, dental, life, per year)

Retirement Match (percent of salary)

Equipment, Software, Training (per year)

Values shown are examples. Edit them to match your situation.

See your full report

True Cost Of This Hire

Salary	$0
Employer Payroll Taxes	$0
Workers Compensation	$0
Benefits And Match	$0
Equipment And Other	$0
Cost Per Hour	$0
Cost Per Month	$0
Multiple Of Salary	$0
Total Cost Per Year	$0

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Everything here stays in your browser. The link carries your inputs inside the address itself, and the PDF is made by your own device.

For illustration only, not financial advice. Results are estimates based on the numbers you enter and do not constitute an offer, rate quote or approval.

A hire is a cash commitment. Check the runway first.

How many months of cash are left once the new salary is in the run rate.

Check your runway

How this is worked out

The employer half of FICA is fixed by statute: 6.2% for Social Security up to the annual wage base, and 1.45% for Medicare with no ceiling (26 U.S.C. 3111). The wage base is re indexed every year, so it is a field here rather than a constant.

Federal unemployment tax is 6.0% on the first 7,000 dollars of wages, with a credit of up to 5.4% for state unemployment paid on time, which is why most employers pay an effective 0.6% (26 U.S.C. 3301 and 3302). State unemployment rates and wage bases are set state by state and by your own claims history, so both are fields.

Workers compensation is priced per hundred dollars of payroll by class code and varies enormously between an office and a roof. Benefits, the retirement match and everything else are entered as annual figures.

Cost per hour divides the total by hours paid for. That is the floor a billable rate has to clear before the business earns anything at all.

Questions people ask

What is the usual multiple over salary?

For most small employers the fully loaded cost lands between 1.25 and 1.4 times salary, higher where health coverage is generous or workers compensation is expensive. The point of the page is that you use your own numbers instead of the rule of thumb.

Does this cover a contractor?

No. A 1099 contractor pays their own self employment tax and carries their own insurance, so their cost to you is the invoice. Whether a worker can be treated as a contractor is a legal test about control, not a preference.

Why is the Social Security wage base a field?

Because it is re indexed every year. Hard coding it would silently produce a wrong answer the following January, which is exactly the class of error this page exists to avoid.

Should I include a manager's time?

If you are pricing work, yes, as part of overhead. Supervision, recruiting and onboarding are real costs of a hire, they just never appear on a payroll report.

What about equipment and software?

Put them in the other annual costs field. A laptop, a phone, a desk and a seat licence commonly add two to five thousand dollars a year per person.

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