👤 Employee Cost Calculator

The Employee Cost Calculator finds the fully-loaded cost of hiring an employee — the true expense to the business once payroll taxes, benefits, and overhead are added on top of base salary. It's built for founders building hiring budgets, HR and finance teams pricing headcount into a plan, and anyone comparing the cost of an employee against a contractor's quoted rate.

How It Works

Starting from base annual salary, the calculator adds employer payroll taxes (the employer's share of FICA plus unemployment insurance, entered as a percentage of salary), a retirement match (also a percentage of salary), health insurance and other benefits (entered as flat annual dollar amounts), and an overhead allocation covering office space, equipment, software, and administrative support (a percentage of salary). Summing all of these against base salary produces the fully-loaded annual cost, and dividing that figure by base salary gives the loaded cost multiplier.

Why It Matters

Budgeting for a new hire using base salary alone consistently underestimates what the role will actually cost. The loaded cost multiplier gives a quick rule of thumb — multiply any target salary by it to estimate the real annual cost — and the itemized breakdown shows exactly which cost categories are driving the total, which is useful when deciding where to trim if a hiring budget is tight.

Tips for Accurate Results

• Use your actual employer payroll tax rate, which varies by state and includes unemployment insurance rates that differ by industry and claims history.
• Don't forget less obvious benefits like paid time off accrual, life insurance, or wellness stipends — roll them into "Other Benefits" if they're not itemized separately.
• Overhead is necessarily an estimate; if you have real per-employee facilities or software costs, use those instead of a flat percentage for a more precise number.
• Recalculate whenever benefit costs change — health insurance premiums in particular tend to rise year over year.