Labor & Overhead Costs
Before any price can be right, the costs underneath it have to be. The calculators in this section exist to answer one question precisely: what does an hour of work — and a month of business — actually cost you? Not the wage on the paycheck, and not the invoice from the supply house, but the full number.
Direct labor is the visible part. Labor burden is the part that quietly breaks estimates: payroll taxes, workers' compensation at your class-code rate, benefits, and the paid hours that produce no revenue. Overhead is the third layer — insurance, vehicles, tools, software — that every billable hour has to carry.
Once these numbers are honest, every pricing decision downstream gets easier: your hourly rate stops being a guess, your job prices carry a known overhead slice, and your break-even count stops being optimistic.
Labor Burden Calculator
A $25/hour employee doesn't cost $25 an hour. Enter the wage plus taxes, insurance, benefits and non-billable time to see the fully burdened hourly cost you should be using in every estimate..
Contractor Hourly Rate Calculator
Built for owner-operators.
Contractor Overhead Calculator
Insurance, truck, tools, phone, software, accounting .
The terms, in plain language
Direct labor: The wages for hours actually spent on a job — costed at the burdened rate, not the bare wage.
Labor burden: Everything an employee costs beyond the wage: payroll taxes, workers' comp, benefits, and non-billable paid time. Commonly 25–40% on top of base wages.
Materials: Job supplies at their real delivered cost, including waste, delivery fees and the small consumables that add up.
Overhead: Costs that exist whether or not any job is running: insurance, rent, vehicles, software, accounting. Recovered per job or per billable hour — on purpose.
Total job cost: Direct costs plus the overhead allowance — the number your margin applies to.