Free labor burden calculator · No signup
Find the true hourly cost of an employee — base wage plus payroll taxes, workers' comp, liability, benefits, and overhead — so you bid labor from the real number.
Estimate only. Use your actual tax, comp, and benefit rates for bidding.
The wage on the paycheck is only part of what a field employee costs you. Add payroll taxes (FICA, FUTA, SUTA), workers' compensation, general liability, health and other benefits, and overhead like training, PPE, and a truck, and the true cost — the fully burdened rate — runs well above the base wage.
The calculation: total every annual employer cost on top of the base annual wage, then divide by the employee's annual hours. The burden percentage tells you how far above base wage your real cost sits — commonly 25–40% in construction, but workers' comp rates alone vary enormously by trade and state, so use your own numbers.
Bidding from the base wage instead of the burdened rate quietly erases profit on every labor hour. Field PM tracks labor by cost code against budget so you can see whether the rate you bid is holding up on the actual job.
Labor burden is everything an employee costs you beyond their base wage — payroll taxes, workers' comp, general liability, health and other benefits, training, PPE, and vehicle. The fully burdened rate is your true hourly cost, and it's what you should price labor from, not the base wage.
Add all annual employer costs to the base annual wage, then divide by the employee's annual productive hours. This calculator does it from base wage, annual hours, and each burden component. The burden % shows how much above base wage the true cost runs.
For construction it commonly runs 25–40% over base wage, but it varies a lot by trade and state — workers' comp rates alone swing from a couple percent for office roles to 15%+ for high-risk trades like roofing or steel. Always use your own actual rates.
If you bid labor at the base wage, you lose the burden on every hour — and on a labor-heavy job that's the difference between profit and loss. Pricing from the fully burdened rate (plus markup) is how you actually cover your costs.
Field PM builds the math into the platform — job costing, billing, and forecasting from real field data. 14-day free trial, no credit card.
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