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A $25 wage is not a $25 cost. Load in payroll taxes, workers comp, benefits, and paid time off to get the number your bids should use.
Every hour an employee is on the clock, you pay the wage - and then FICA, unemployment insurance, workers comp, and whatever benefits you cover. Then paid holidays and vacation pay out wages for hours that produce nothing, which quietly raises the price of every hour that remains.
Stacked up, that burden runs 25% to 40% on top of the wage for most trades, and past 50% where comp rates are steep. A $25/hr helper at a 35% burden costs you nearly $34 an hour - so a bid that prices their time at $25 loses money before the job starts.
Payroll taxes are roughly the same for everyone; comp is not. It is priced per $100 of wages by trade class - a few percent for light service work, and north of 20% for roofing in some states. Pull the real rate off your policy instead of guessing.
Fifteen paid days is three weeks of wages with no hours back. That is the piece most contractors skip, and it is why the true hourly cost surprises even people who knew about the taxes.
The burdened cost is a floor, not a rate. The bill-at rows above add a gross margin on top; the markup vs margin calculator shows why that math is not a simple markup. Pricing your own hours instead? That is the hourly rate calculator.
Everything an employee costs beyond the wage: payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, workers comp, and benefits, plus paid time off that pays wages for hours nobody works. It is usually expressed as a percentage on top of the base wage.
Most trades land between 25% and 40% on top of the wage. Heavy-comp trades like roofing can pass 50%. The two biggest swings are the workers comp class rate and whether you cover health insurance.
Yes. The burdened rate is what an hour of crew time actually costs, so it is the floor for pricing that hour. Bid with the bare wage and the burden comes straight out of your margin - about a third of it, silently.
No. Nothing you type is transmitted or stored - the math runs in your browser. There is no account and no email.
See all contractor tools, or jump to real labor costs tracked against every job.
Compare the hours and costs you quoted against what the job actually took.
Convert between the two, and find the markup that lands the margin you want.
Work back from the take-home you want, your overhead, and the hours you can actually bill.
A payment schedule from a job total - deposit, progress draw, and balance, the three payments you will actually collect.
Trade-by-trade launch costs, the monthly bills that start on day one, and your runway.
Fixed costs divided by what a job really contributes - the first number a new business should know.
The all-in monthly cost, the cost on every job, and the extra jobs a month that carry it.
The profit that truly replaces a W2 - benefits and self-employment tax included.
FastEstimateMaker tracks hours and costs against each estimate, so you see the true margin per job - burden included. Start free - no credit card required.
Build a real estimate freeSolo is $29.99/month with every office feature. Canvass is $59.99/month plus $19.99/month per rep seat.
