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Employee cost calculator: the true cost of an employee
The true cost of an employee is their salary plus employer payroll taxes, benefits, equipment and overhead. Benefits were 30 percent of private employers' compensation costs in June 2026, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Enter a salary to see the fully loaded cost, the cost per working hour, and what a weekly meeting or an idle hour costs.
This employee cost calculator uses the 2026 federal payroll tax rates, checked . No sign-up: the result updates as you type.
Calculate the true cost of an employee
Change any number and the results update as you type. The defaults are a worked example: a $60,000 salary with 2026 federal tax rates.
Pay and costs
Jump to the resultPay
Benefits
Default 14.5%: what private employers spent on insurance ($3.69) and retirement ($1.57) per hour worked in June 2026, divided by wages ($32.82) plus paid leave ($3.54), which a salary already includes. Source: BLS ECEC, Table 1.
Equipment, software and overheadExample values
A laptop spread over its life, plus software licenses.
This person's share of office space, payroll and HR services and insurance.
Paid time offExample values
Team mode
Multiplies the annual and monthly cost for a team or a new hiring plan.
Employer payroll tax assumptions
Federal rates and wage bases for 2026, from the Social Security Administration and the IRS. State unemployment tax depends on your state, so its default is an example. Every value is editable. Checked .
The employer pays 6.2% and withholds the same from pay. Source: SSA and IRS Publication 15.
No Social Security tax on pay above this in 2026. For 2027 it rises to $192,300. Source: SSA.
On all pay, with no wage base. The 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax has no employer share. Source: SSA and IRS Publication 15.
6.0% minus a credit of up to 5.4% for state unemployment tax paid; more in a credit reduction state. Source: IRS Topic 759.
FUTA applies to the first $7,000 paid to each employee in a year. Source: IRS Topic 759.
2.7% is the base rate for new employers in Texas. Use the rate on your state's notice. Source: Department of Labor.
$9,000 in Texas. Every state sets its own wage base. Source: Department of Labor.
The true cost
Fully loaded annual cost
$80,575
1.34 times salary
For one person. Use team mode to total a team.
- Per month
- $6,715
- Per working hour
- $42.86
- Per minute
- $0.71
- Salary
- $60,000
- Social Security
- $3,720
- Medicare
- $870
- Federal unemployment
- $42
- State unemployment
- $243
- Benefits
- $8,700
- Equipment and software
- $2,000
- Overhead
- $5,000
- Fully loaded cost
- $80,575
1,880 working hours a year: 2,080 paid hours minus 200 hours of paid time off and holidays.
One hour of idle time a week costs $2,014 a year.
A weekly one-hour meeting with this person costs $2,014 a year.
Price the whole meeting in the meeting cost calculatorThe formula
How is the true cost of an employee calculated?
Add the employer's costs to pay: payroll taxes, benefits, equipment and software, and overhead. The total is the fully loaded cost. Divide it by the hours the person actually works, after paid time off and holidays, and you have the cost of one working hour.
The formulas
Fully loaded cost = pay + employer payroll taxes + benefits + equipment and software + overhead
Employer payroll taxes = Social Security (6.2% of pay up to $184,500) + Medicare (1.45% of all pay) + federal unemployment (0.6% of the first $7,000) + state unemployment (your state's rate on its wage base)
Working hours = hours per week × 52 - (paid time off + holidays) × hours per day
Cost per working hour = fully loaded cost ÷ working hours
The tax rates are the 2026 federal rates. The employee's own withholding (their half of Social Security and Medicare, and income tax) comes out of their pay, so it isn't an employer cost. Bonuses, overtime and workers' compensation insurance aren't included; add them to benefits or overhead if you pay them.
Worked example: a $60,000 salary
- Social Security: 6.2% × $60,000 = $3,720, since the salary is under the $184,500 wage base.
- Medicare: 1.45% × $60,000 = $870.
- Federal unemployment: 0.6% × $7,000 = $42.
- State unemployment, using the Texas example: 2.7% × $9,000 = $243. Employer payroll taxes come to $4,875.
- Benefits: 14.5% × $60,000 = $8,700.
- Equipment and software $2,000 and overhead $5,000, both example values.
- Fully loaded cost: $60,000 + $4,875 + $8,700 + $2,000 + $5,000 = $80,575 a year, 1.34 times salary, or $6,715 a month.
- Working hours: 40 × 52 = 2,080 paid hours, minus (15 + 10) days × 8 hours = 200, leaves 1,880 working hours.
- Cost per working hour: $80,575 ÷ 1,880 = $42.86, or $0.71 a minute.
- One hour a week, every one of the 47 working weeks: 47 × $42.86 = $2,014 a year.
The same salary is $28.85 per paid hour. The difference between that and $42.86 is what employers miss when they price time at salary alone.
Employer costs
What's included in employer costs?
Four costs come on top of pay: employer payroll taxes, benefits, equipment and software, and overhead. Paid time off adds no cost to a salary, but it reduces the hours worked, so the calculator uses it to work out the cost per hour.
Employer payroll taxes
$4,875 in the example
Social Security at 6.2% of pay up to $184,500 in 2026, Medicare at 1.45% of all pay, federal unemployment tax at 0.6% of the first $7,000 after the credit for state tax, and state unemployment tax at your state's rate on its wage base. The calculator's state default is an example.
Benefits
14.5% of pay by default
Health, life and disability insurance and retirement contributions. Private employers spent $3.69 per hour worked on insurance and $1.57 on retirement and savings in June 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Benefits of every kind were 30.0% of compensation costs, but that share also counts paid leave, bonuses and payroll taxes, which the calculator handles separately.
Equipment and software
$2,000 a yearExample
A laptop spread over the years you keep it, a phone if you provide one, and the software licenses each person needs, from email and office apps to the tools of their role.
Overhead
$5,000 a yearExample
A share of office space and utilities, payroll and HR services, and business insurance. Fully remote employees usually cost less here, but a home office allowance belongs in this line.
Paid time off and holidays
15 + 10 days a yearExample
A salary already pays for days off, so they add no cost on top. They cut the hours worked instead, which raises the cost of each working hour: 2,080 paid hours become 1,880 working hours.
What isn't included
Add it if you pay it
Recruiting and onboarding, bonuses and overtime, and workers' compensation insurance, whose rate depends on your state and the type of work. Add a yearly amount for any of them to benefits or overhead.
Cost per hour
How much does an employee cost per hour?
Divide the fully loaded annual cost by the hours the person actually works. In the example, a $60,000 salary is $28.85 per paid hour, but the employee costs $42.86 per working hour once employer costs and 25 days of paid time off and holidays are counted.
Why the hourly figure matters for planning
- Pricing work: a project that takes 100 hours of this person's time costs $4,286, not $2,885.
- Meetings: every attendee costs their hourly rate for every hour in the room, so a weekly meeting is a yearly cost. The meeting cost calculator adds it up for the whole room.
- Hiring and contractors: compare a contractor's hourly rate with the loaded hourly cost of an employee, not with salary divided by 2,080.
- Idle and lost time: an hour a week that produces nothing costs $2,014 a year at this rate.
The multiple of salary falls as pay rises, because unemployment taxes stop at small wage bases, Social Security stops at $184,500, and equipment and overhead are the same amount for everyone.
Employee cost by salary
With the calculator's defaults: 2026 federal tax rates, 14.5% benefits, and the example values for state unemployment, equipment, overhead and 1,880 working hours a year.
| Salary | Fully loaded cost | Times salary | Per working hour | Per minute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $40,000 | $56,145 | 1.40 | $29.86 | $0.50 |
| $60,000 | $80,575 | 1.34 | $42.86 | $0.71 |
| $80,000 | $105,005 | 1.31 | $55.85 | $0.93 |
| $100,000 | $129,435 | 1.29 | $68.85 | $1.15 |
| $150,000 | $190,510 | 1.27 | $101.34 | $1.69 |
| $200,000 | $250,624 | 1.25 | $133.31 | $2.22 |
Idle time
What does idle time cost?
At $42.86 per working hour, one hour of idle time a week costs $2,014 a year for one person and $20,144 for a team of 10. Not every idle hour is waste: a meeting away from the desk or a phone call looks idle to a computer. The question is where the paid hours go.
Intelogos is a workforce analytics platform that shows how work time is spent across apps and websites, without screenshots or keystroke logging, and lets managers ask questions about it in plain language. Here is how its workforce analytics shows idle time and the hours around it.
Idle time, measured the same way for everyone
Idle time is an extended period of zero activity on a computer: no keyboard use, mouse clicks or mouse movement. The agent flags it once inactivity reaches a threshold, 20 minutes by default. Communication tools have a separate threshold, which you can set longer so that listening in a call isn't flagged.
Idle time settingsYour rules for what counts as work
Idle time can be saved and highlighted in reports, or discarded. With desktop agents you can let each person decide when they come back, with a note such as "In a meeting", and idle periods longer than a few hours, like a computer left on overnight, can be discarded automatically.
Save or discard idle timeWorkday and Availability
Workday is the average amount of time tracked on a workday, idle time included if it is saved. Availability is the portion of the day the user was working, out of the total amount of time they were expected to work. Low Availability can mean time off, meetings or work away from the computer, so treat it as a question, not a verdict.
Availability KPIActivity
Activity is the percentage of active seconds, with mouse or keyboard input, out of the total seconds tracked. Between 20% and 50% is typical and healthy for most jobs, and meetings and reading lower it even though real work is happening.
Activity KPIIdle time per person and team
The Leaders table on the Dashboard can show each person's total Idle time and Average Idle per workday next to Workday and Availability, and the weekly overview on the Profile page marks idle time in ten-minute blocks across each day.
DashboardChronicle, when you need the detail
Chronicle is a chronological record of a person's tracked computer activity: each tool and window, the time spent and the active time. Owners can open it, and admins and managers when they have Chronicle permissions.
Chronicle
Intelogos doesn't take screenshots. Intelogos doesn't record what people type; it records only whether keyboard or mouse input happened.
FAQs
Frequently asked questions
Costs on top of salary, the cost per hour, benefits, tax rates and contractors.
Sources
Every tax rate, wage base and benefit figure on this page comes from the official page linked below, read on the date shown. Rates change each year, so check them before you budget. Checked October 23, 2026.
- Social Security Administration: Contribution and Benefit Base (6.2% Social Security rate, $184,500 wage base for 2026 and $192,300 for 2027, 1.45% Medicare rate with no wage limit)
- IRS Publication 15 (2026), Employer's Tax Guide (2026 Social Security and Medicare rates and wage base; no employer share of Additional Medicare Tax)
- IRS Topic no. 759: Form 940 and federal unemployment (FUTA) tax (FUTA at 6.0% of the first $7,000 of wages, a credit of up to 5.4%, 0.6% after the credit)
- US Department of Labor: Significant Provisions of State Unemployment Insurance Laws, July 2026 (state unemployment tax wage bases and new employer rates, including the Texas example of 2.7% on $9,000)
- Bureau of Labor Statistics: Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026 (released September 9, 2026) (benefits were 30.0% of private industry compensation costs per hour worked)
- Bureau of Labor Statistics: ECEC Table 1, by ownership, June 2026 (private industry costs per hour worked: wages $32.82, paid leave $3.54, insurance $3.69, retirement and savings $1.57)
- IRS: Independent contractor (self-employed) or employee? (no payroll taxes on payments to independent contractors)
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