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Total Compensation Calculator

Benefits average about a third of what an employer spends on an employee, so comparing two roles on salary alone ignores roughly a third of the money.

Last updated Free, no sign-upHow it works

Your inputs
Cash

Total grant value divided by the vesting period, at the valuation you were quoted.

Employer-paid benefits

The match you actually expect to earn, not the maximum available.

What the employer pays, not your payroll deduction. Ask for it — it is on the benefits summary.

Results update as you type. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or stored.

Total compensation: $101,784.36, an exact figure.

Total compensation

high confidence
$101,784.36What this role is worth a year, before tax

Exact figure. This calculator has no modeled range — the number follows directly from your inputs.

What makes up the typical figure

  • Base salary$78,000
  • Employer health insurance premium$7,440
  • Employer payroll tax$6,444
  • Target bonus (8%)$6,240
  • Everything else$3,660
  • Same in every state
  • Assumptions 2026.07.1

Why high: this is exact arithmetic on your inputs and the published figures used, so there is no modeled range.

Key figures

Cash compensation
$84,240Salary, bonus, and annualised equity — the part that reaches your bank account.
Value beyond cash
$17,544
Benefits as a share of the package
1,723.7%
Total as a multiple of base salary
1.3 ×
Total compensation per hour
$48.93Across 2,080 paid hours.
Value of your paid time off
$8,298Already inside the salary rather than added to it. Shown because it is what separates two otherwise identical offers.
Total per month
$8,482

Cost breakdown

Estimated cost of each component, with low, typical, and high values.
ComponentLowTypicalHigh
Base salaryOther$78,000$78,000$78,000
Target bonus (8%)OtherA target, not a guarantee. Ask what was actually paid out in recent years.$6,240$6,240$6,240
Employer retirement contribution (4%)OtherOnly real to the extent you contribute enough to earn a match, and only yours once vested.$3,120$3,120$3,120
Employer health insurance premiumOther$620 a month, the employer's share. Your own contribution and deductible are not included.$7,440$7,440$7,440
Life, disability, and other insuranceOther$540$540$540
Employer payroll taxOtherSocial Security and Medicare, the employer half. A real cost of employing you, though not a benefit you receive directly.$6,444.36$6,444.36$6,444.36
Total compensation$101,784.36$101,784.36$101,784.36

Every figure here is exact arithmetic on your inputs; the rows add up to the total.

What moved your estimate

  • Benefits are 17% of this package

    Across private industry, benefits average 30.0% of total compensation (BLS, June 2026). This package is light on benefits relative to that, so more of its value depends on the cash holding up.

How this number was produced
  1. Cash$78,000 salary + $6,240 bonus + $0 equity$84,240
  2. Employer-paid benefitsretirement + health + other insurance + stipends$11,100
  3. Employer payroll tax6.2% Social Security to the wage base + 1.45% Medicare$6,444
  4. Totalcash + benefits + payroll tax$101,784

Adjustments applied

  • Benefit load on base salary×1.30

    Every dollar of base salary comes with $0.30 of other compensation in this package.

  • Private industry benchmark×0.57

    This package against the published 30.0% benefit share for private industry.

Notes and sources6 notes, 1 source

Worth knowing

  • Paid time off is deliberately not added to the total. You are already paid for it through your salary, so adding it again would double count. Its value is shown separately, because two offers with the same salary and different leave are not the same offer.
  • Employer payroll tax is included by default because it is a genuine cost of employing you and belongs in any comparison against contract or self-employed work, where you would pay both halves yourself. It is not money you receive, so switch it off if you are comparing two employee offers against each other.
  • Equity is the least reliable line. It is worth what the shares turn out to be worth, it usually vests over several years, and most people do not stay long enough to collect all of it. Annualise it if you like, then discount it according to how much you believe the valuation and how long you expect to stay.
  • A target bonus is a target. Ask what percentage of target was actually paid in each of the last three years before treating it as income.
  • For context, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts total employer compensation costs at $49.46 an hour for civilian workers in June 2026, of which $15.61 — 31.6% — is benefits rather than wages.
  • No tax is calculated on your side of the ledger. What you keep depends on your filing status, your state, and your elections.

Sources

  • U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (June 2026); U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division, Fair Labor Standards Act overtime and Part 541 exemption regulationsprimaryJune 2026retrieved 2026-09-11

This calculator adds up everything a package is worth, shows how much of it is cash and how much is not, and puts the result beside the Bureau of Labor Statistics figure for what benefits normally represent.

Methodology

How this calculator works

What is counted and what is not

Everything the employer spends on you that you can point to: salary, bonus, annualised equity, retirement contributions, their share of insurance premiums, stipends, and — optionally — the employer half of payroll tax.

Paid time off is not added. You are already paid for those days through your salary, so counting them again inflates the total. Its value is reported separately instead, because leave is precisely what makes two identical salaries unequal.

Nothing on your side of the ledger is taxed here. What you actually keep depends on filing status, state, and elections, and guessing at those would produce a worse number than omitting them.

The benchmark

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes what employers actually spend per hour worked. For June 2026, civilian workers averaged $49.46 an hour in total compensation, of which $15.61 was benefits — 31.6%.

The gap between sectors is large and worth knowing when comparing across them: benefits are 30.0% of total compensation in private industry against 38.8% in state and local government, largely because public-sector retirement and health provision is more generous.

Your own package being above or below the benchmark is not itself good or bad. A benefit-heavy package suits someone who will use the insurance and stay long enough to vest; a cash-heavy one suits someone who will not.

Why equity deserves a discount

Equity is counted at the value you were quoted, which is the most optimistic reasonable figure. Private company valuations are set at a moment and can move sharply in either direction; public company grants at least have a real price but still fluctuate.

Vesting compounds the uncertainty. A four-year schedule with a one-year cliff means leaving at eleven months collects nothing, and median tenure in many industries is shorter than the schedule. Discount accordingly rather than treating the annualised figure as salary.

Location and data

Where the numbers come from

This calculator does not ask where you live, because the answer is the same in every state: it is arithmetic on the figures you enter and the published figures listed below. That is also why the result reports high confidence — there is no regional estimate in it to be uncertain about.

Nothing you enter is transmitted or stored. The calculation runs entirely in your browser, and the only place your inputs appear is in the page URL, so you can bookmark or share a result if you choose to.

  • primaryJune 2026v2026.09.1

    U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (June 2026); U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division, Fair Labor Standards Act overtime and Part 541 exemption regulations

    Compensation shares are the published BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation figures for June 2026 — employer cost per hour worked, which is what an employer spends rather than what an employee receives after tax. The Fair Labor Standards Act figures are the federal floor only. Many states set stricter rules, and no state rules are encoded here, so nothing in this dataset should be read as establishing what any particular worker is owed.

Full detail on every dataset is on the data sources page. Spotted something wrong? Report incorrect data.

Calibration

The judgements behind this estimate

These are the figures we chose rather than measured. For each one we record the range of values found across references, what we selected, and why — because an estimate you cannot interrogate is not much better than a guess. The 0 marked high risk are the ones most likely to be wrong and most consequential when they are.

  • Employer share of Social Security and Medicarehigh confidence
    Observed range
    0.0145 — 0.0765 (typical 0.0765)share of wages
    Why this value
    6.2% Social Security up to the annual wage base plus 1.45% Medicare with no cap, which is the employer half. Included in total compensation because it is a genuine cost of employment and is essential when comparing an employee role against contract work, where the worker pays both halves.
    Applies to
    Federal, so uniform. State unemployment insurance is an additional employer cost that varies by state and by the employer's claims history, and is not modeled.
    Known limits
    The wage base is indexed annually and needs checking each January. Federal and state unemployment insurance, and workers compensation, are real employer costs not included here.
    Sources
    Federal Insurance Contributions Act rates; Social Security Administration annual wage base
    Last verified
    2026-07-31 · reviewed annual

Cost factors

What changes the price most

Health insurance
Often the largest non-cash line. An employer paying $620 a month contributes about $7,400 a year that never appears on the offer letter.
Retirement match
Straightforward and reliable, but only real if you contribute enough to earn it and stay long enough to vest.
Equity
Potentially the largest line and certainly the least certain. Depends on a valuation holding and on you staying to vest.
Bonus
A target is not a payment. Ask what percentage of target was actually paid in recent years.
Paid time off
Not added to the total, but decisive between two equal salaries. Five extra days is about 2% of salary.
Payroll tax
Roughly 7.65% of pay up to the Social Security wage base. Matters enormously when comparing against contract work, where you pay both halves.

Questions

Frequently asked

What is total compensation?

Everything an employer spends on you in a year: salary, bonus, equity, retirement contributions, their share of insurance premiums, stipends, and payroll tax. Benefits average about 32% of it across civilian workers, so a package is typically worth substantially more than its salary.

How much are benefits worth as a percentage of salary?

Across all civilian workers, benefits are 31.6% of total compensation (BLS, June 2026), which works out near 46% on top of wages. Private industry runs lower at 30.0% and state and local government higher at 38.8%.

Should I include paid time off in total compensation?

No — it is already inside your salary, so adding it double counts. It is still worth valuing separately, because it is often the clearest difference between two offers at the same salary. This calculator shows it as its own figure rather than folding it into the total.

How do I compare a job offer with equity to one without?

Annualise the grant at its quoted value, then discount it for two things: whether the valuation will hold, and whether you will stay long enough to vest. A four-year schedule with a one-year cliff is worth nothing if you leave at eleven months, and median tenure in many industries is under four years.

Why is employer payroll tax included?

Because it is a real cost of employing you, and it matters when comparing an employee role against contract or self-employed work where you would pay both halves yourself. It is not money you receive, so it can be switched off when comparing two employee offers.