Labor Burden Rate Calculator

Your tech's wage is only part of what they cost. The fully loaded cost adds the employer's payroll taxes, workers' comp, general liability, and benefits on top of the base wage. Dividing that loaded annual cost by paid hours gives the burdened cost rate — what an hour of that tech truly costs you.

annualWage      = wagePerHr × paidHoursPerYear        (default 2,080)
payrollTaxes    = annualWage × (FICA% + FUTA% + SUTA%)
workersComp     = annualWage × (WC$ / 100)            (rate per $100 payroll)
genLiability    = annualWage × (GL$ / 1,000)          (rate per $1,000 payroll)
benefitsAnnual  = (health + retirement + other) × 12
loadedAnnual    = annualWage + taxes + WC + GL + benefits

burden %         = (loadedAnnual − annualWage) / annualWage
burdenedCostRate = loadedAnnual / paidHoursPerYear

billableHours        = paidHoursPerYear − nonBillableHours
costPerBillableHour  = loadedAnnual / billableHours

The number most calculators miss. Dividing the loaded cost by all 2,080 paid hours understates the real cost of an invoiced hour, because PTO, holidays, training, and drive/idle time are paid but never billed. Enter your non-billable hours and the tool also shows the cost per billable hour — the gap (e.g. $33 vs $43) that silently eats margin when you bid off the lower number.

Why FUTA defaults to 0.6%. FUTA is 6.0% of the first $7,000 of wages, but employers who pay state unemployment on time get a 5.4% credit, leaving an effective 0.6%. We default to 0.6% so the tool doesn't overstate your burden.

Workers' comp is entered as dollars per $100 of payroll and general liability as dollars per $1,000 — the conventions your carrier quotes — so you can paste their rate unchanged. These, plus SUTA, are state/trade/experience-rated; treat the defaults as editable placeholders, not quotes. This tool does not run payroll or store employee records.

Sources: Connecteam labor-burden formula + tax defaults; HiBob fully-burdened labor components; busybusy per-$100 workers'-comp / per-$1,000 general-liability convention.