Labor Rate Calculator

What an hour of your technician's time actually costs you, once you count the overhead, the unbillable hours, and the employer side of payroll that a plain hourly rate leaves out.

20 minutes · Excel

Base hourly wage

$/hr

What you pay the tech per hour.Paid hours per year

hrs

Full-time is about 2,080.Unbillable time

Drive time, admin, callbacks, training, hours you pay for but never bill.Payroll taxes

FICA, FUTA, SUTA, the employer side, ~10%.Workers' comp

Rate varies by trade; often 5–12%.Benefits per year

Health, retirement, paid time off, cash value.Overhead per tech / year

Truck, fuel, tools, phone, insurance carried per tech.

What that hour really costs

$50.87/billable hr

You pay $25.00/hr, but each billable hour actually costs 2.0× that once payroll, comp, benefits, overhead, and unbillable time are in the number.

Annual base pay: $52,000
Employer burden + overhead: $27,360
Total annual cost: $79,360
Billable hours / year: 1,560

Rule of thumb: if you bill below this number, that job loses money before you have paid for anything else. The downloadable spreadsheet does the same math for a whole crew and saves your inputs.

Free download

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