Labor & job costing
Fully Loaded Hourly Labor Cost Calculator
Spread annual wages, estimated employer burden, benefits and allocated overhead across paid hours and productive hours. Keep the cost estimate separate from your customer billing rate.
13 / LOAD THE LABOR COST
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INPUT GROUP 01
Annual employer costs
Enter each employer cost once, in the same currency and annual period.
INPUT GROUP 02
Annual time
Productive hours must remain greater than zero.
Check the assumptions before acting on a result.
Read the method and exampleYOUR CALCULATION
Productive-hour cost spreads the entered annual employer cost over the hours available for productive work.
Total annual employer cost
Annual productive hours
Cost per productive hour
Cost per paid hour
Productive-hour cost as nonproductive time changes
| Nonproductive share | Nonproductive hours | Productive hours | Cost per productive hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.00% | 0 hr | 2,080 hr | $39.52 |
| 10.00% | 208 hr | 1,872 hr | $43.91 |
| 20.00% | 416 hr | 1,664 hr | $49.40 |
| 19.23% | 400 hr | 1,680 hr | $48.93 |
Illustrative inputs loaded. Replace them with your own assumptions.
How the fully loaded hourly labor cost calculator works
Estimated annual payroll burden is annual wages multiplied by the entered burden percentage. Total annual employer cost adds wages, rounded burden, other annual benefits and the overhead allocation. Productive hours are paid hours minus paid nonproductive hours. Both time inputs cover the same annual period and worker or consistently defined labor group.
Cost per paid hour = annual employer cost ÷ paid hours. Cost per productive hour = annual employer cost ÷ productive hours. The second rate rises as fewer of the paid hours are available to deliver productive work. Annual cash components round to cents, burden rounds half-up once, and the resulting hourly costs round half-up to cents.
Paid leave is commonly already included in an annual wage or salary. Leave can reduce the productive-hour denominator without adding those same wages again as a benefit. Similarly, a combined burden estimate and a separate benefit allowance must not include the same insurance, retirement or employer tax expense twice. Use your own records to define the categories.
BLS reports wages and benefits as separate elements of employer compensation, but no national average or jurisdiction rate is supplied to this calculator. The entered burden is an estimate, not a payroll compliance calculation. Overtime rules, worker classification, employee deductions, capacity, profit and customer willingness to pay require separate consideration. A loaded cost is not automatically a selling price.
Worked example
Annual wages of $60,000 with 12% estimated burden add $7,200. Adding $9,000 benefits and $6,000 overhead gives $82,200 annual employer cost. Of 2,080 paid hours, 400 are nonproductive, leaving 1,680 productive hours. Cost is $39.52 per paid hour and $48.93 per productive hour. These are illustrative cost allocations, not tax rates or recommended wages.
Sources and assumptions
The source material explains the underlying calculation or pricing structure. Entered prices, costs, schedules and scenario choices are your assumptions; this tool does not obtain supplier quotes or predict actual results.
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