Business tools
Hiring Cost Calculator
Estimate first-year and ongoing employee costs from salary, payroll burden, benefits and one-time hiring expenses.
Enter your own salary and employer-cost assumptions. Blank optional hiring costs count as zero; blank work-time assumptions use 52 weeks and 40 hours per week.
The calculation runs locally in your browser. No input values are saved or sent to a server.
Estimate the total cost of hiring an employee.
Typical hire example
An $80,000 salary with 10% payroll burden and $8,000 in annual benefits costs $96,000 per year before hiring costs. Adding $10,000 in recruiting, equipment and training makes the first-year total $106,000.
About this calculator
What goes into the estimate
Ongoing annual cost includes salary, employer payroll burden and annual benefits. First-year cost adds recruiting, equipment, onboarding and any other one-time hiring costs.
Loaded hourly cost
Loaded hourly cost divides ongoing employment cost by working weeks and hours. The first-year equivalent also includes the one-time hiring costs.
Actual employment costs vary by jurisdiction, company and benefit structure. Use your own payroll, tax and benefit assumptions. This estimate is for planning only and is not legal, tax or employment-law advice.