Labor Burden Rate Calculator - what your employees actually cost.

Labor burden rate = total indirect labor cost / total direct labor cost. A worker paid $25 an hour usually costs $35 to $45 fully burdened once payroll taxes, benefits, and overhead are added. Enter your numbers to get your real hourly cost.

Base hourly rate is what you pay. Burden rate is what they cost. Manufacturers typically miss 30-50% of true labor cost when quoting jobs. This calculator gives you the loaded number - per productive hour, not per paid hour.

Base pay

Hourly base rate ($)

Paid hours per year

PTO + holidays (days/year)

Statutory costs

FICA (% of base)

SUTA (state unemployment %)

Workers Comp ($ per $100 payroll)

Benefits

Health insurance ($/yr)

Dental + vision ($/yr)

Retirement (% of base)

Life + disability insurance ($/yr)

Overhead per employee

Facility cost / employee ($/yr)

Equipment + tools / employee ($/yr)

Training cost / employee ($/yr)

Supervision cost / employee ($/yr)

Safety + PPE ($/yr)

HR + admin / employee ($/yr)

When every quote depends on the right labor cost

SimpleGrid prices jobs at fully-loaded labor - not base rate.

Burden rates set once, applied automatically to every job cost calculation. When health insurance jumps 8%, your quotes reflect it the same day.

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The hidden cost of labor

When you pay a worker $22/hr base, you actually spend $28-34/hr to keep them employed. The difference is statutory costs (FICA, unemployment, workers comp), benefits (health insurance, retirement, PTO), and overhead (facility, equipment, supervision). Every quote you build using the base rate underprices labor by 30-50%.

Why "productive hours" matters

The denominator is productive hours, not paid hours. A worker paid 2,080 hours/year but taking 23 days of PTO/holidays is actually productive 1,896 hours. That 184-hour gap (8.8%) inflates your real hourly cost.

FAQ

What's the typical burden multiplier?

1.35-1.55x base pay for US manufacturing. India is typically 1.20-1.35x (lower statutory + benefits). Knowing yours specifically beats using an industry average.

What about overtime hours?

OT is paid at 1.5x base but the burden stays largely the same (FICA + workers comp scale, benefits don't). OT productive hours have a different multiplier - typically 1.25-1.35x. Many shops underestimate the real cost of OT for this reason.