The Trade Contractor's Labor Burden Calculator
You're Quoting Your Wage Rate.
You're Not Quoting Your Labor Cost.
There's a number sitting between what you pay your guys and what labor actually costs you. Most trade contractors never find it — until they lose money on a job they thought they'd make money on.
This free calculator finds that number for you.
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Labor Burden Calculator
Excel Workbook — Input Your Numbers
The exact output you'll get — built for your numbers, not a generic estimate.
You know your trade. Your numbers might be lying to you.
Here's what happens to a lot of subcontractors. They bid a job. They count their guys' wages, add a little for fuel, and throw a margin on top. The bid feels right. They win the job. They do the work. And when it's done, the profit they expected isn't there.
That's not a field problem. That's a math problem.
The wage rate on your guys' checks isn't your labor cost. It's the starting point. Before you've moved a single piece of conduit or hung a single sheet of drywall, you're already paying FICA, FUTA, SUTA, workers comp premiums, and depending on your crew, health insurance and retirement contributions. For most trade contractors, those additional costs run 25% to 40% on top of gross wages. Sometimes more.
So if you're paying a journeyman electrician $32 an hour, your labor burden might be $42, $44, even $46 an hour before he's touched a panel. That gap is where the profit disappears.
The problem is nobody showed you how to calculate this. Your GC doesn't tell you. Workers comp audits come after the fact. And most accountants just reconcile what happened — they don't help you price what's coming.
Here's the thing: this isn't your fault. But it is your problem to fix.
"Most trade contractors are bidding labor 20% to 30% below what it actually costs them to put a body on the job. They don't know it until the bank account tells them."
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What the Calculator Does
The Trade Contractor's Labor Burden Calculator is a straightforward Excel workbook built specifically for specialty subs. You don't need a CPA to use it. You don't need accounting software. You need 15 minutes and your payroll records.
You enter your wage rates, your workers comp class codes and rates, your payroll tax setup, and any benefits you're providing. The calculator outputs your true loaded labor rate — the number you should be using when you build a bid.
It also shows you your burden multiplier. That's the factor you multiply against wages to get to your real cost. Most estimating guides use a generic 1.28 or 1.35. Your number is specific to your business, your state, your crews, and your insurance situation. A generic multiplier built for a GC in Ohio doesn't belong on a bid from an electrical sub in Phoenix.
What the calculator covers:
- Federal payroll taxes — FICA (Social Security and Medicare, employer share)
- Federal unemployment (FUTA) and state unemployment (SUTA, including your experience rate)
- Workers compensation premiums by class code
- General liability insurance allocated to labor
- Paid time off, holidays, and sick days
- Health insurance and any other employer-paid benefits
- Retirement contributions if you offer them
- Tools, small equipment, and consumable allowances
What you walk away with:
- Your true hourly labor cost by employee type
- Your burden multiplier to use in estimating
- A clear line-item breakdown so you know exactly where the cost comes from
- A template you can update every time your insurance renews or your crews change
This is built for you if…
You're running a specialty trade operation. Electrical, plumbing, HVAC, mechanical, concrete, framing, drywall, painting, or any other sub-trade. Your revenue is somewhere between a half million and five million a year. You have employees in the field. You're doing your own estimating, or you're the one who owns the number at the end of the day.
You're not looking for another piece of software to subscribe to. You want a tool you actually own and can open without logging into anything.
You've probably had a job or two where the money didn't work out the way the bid said it would. You're not sure if it was the labor, the material, the scope, or the sub you hired. The labor burden calculator won't solve all of it, but it'll tell you whether you at least started with the right number.
This is NOT for you if:
- You're a solo operator with no employees and you pay yourself an owner's draw. Your situation is different and this calculator would overcomplicate it.
- You have a full-time controller or CFO already running job costing reports. You probably already have this dialed in.
Who built this and why you should trust it
Contractor's Ledger is a cloud accounting firm that works exclusively with specialty trade subcontractors. We don't do retail, restaurants, or professional services. We do contractors. That means we've seen the payroll records, the workers comp audits, the WIP schedules, and the year-end surprises that happen when labor costs aren't tracked correctly.
The accountant behind this practice holds a CPA license and spent years in construction accounting before going independent. Not real estate. Not general contracting. Trade subs. The kind of work where your GC holds 10% retainage for 90 days and your cash flow feels like it's always running one job behind.
We built this calculator because the most common version of "my accountant doesn't help me" we hear from contractors is some version of: I don't actually know if I'm bidding right. That's fixable. This is the first step.
We're not going to sell you an audit. We're not going to call you and pitch you anything. You'll get the calculator. You'll get a few follow-up emails with more information about job costing for trade subs. If you ever want to talk about your books, you can reach out. If not, keep the calculator and use it.
Daniel Jahn, CPA
Founder, Contractor's Ledger
- Licensed CPA, State of Nebraska
- Former Controller, commercial GC
- Construction accounting specialist
- Member, CFMA
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Enter your name and email below. The calculator goes to your inbox in the next two minutes. No waiting for a follow-up. No form confirmation page that makes you click again. It'll be there.
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A few things people ask before they download
Is this actually free or is there a catch?
It's free. There's no hidden paywall, no "free trial" that rolls into a subscription, and nobody from our office is going to call you. We built it to be useful and to show you that we know construction accounting. That's the whole play.
My situation is pretty specific. Will a generic calculator even work for me?
It's not generic. You input your own numbers — your workers comp rates, your state unemployment rate, your actual benefits. The calculator is a framework. You fill in what's real for your business. That's what makes it accurate instead of a rough estimate.
I'm already using an accountant. Do I still need this?
If your accountant is helping you build burden rates into your estimates and reviewing them when your insurance renews, you might not need it. But most contractor accountants do taxes and bookkeeping. They're not sitting down with your estimating process. If you're not sure your burden multiplier is right, the calculator will tell you fast.
What format is it in?
Excel. A real Excel workbook with formulas already built in. You enter your inputs in the yellow cells. Everything else calculates automatically. No macros that your IT department will flag. No cloud connection required.
What happens after I download it?
You'll get a short email series over the next two weeks with additional content about labor costing, job costing, and what to watch on your financials as a trade sub. Not a daily barrage. A few emails with real information. You can unsubscribe from any of them.
Your next bid is either accurate or it isn't.
The calculator takes 15 minutes to fill in. You'll know your true labor cost before you close out of it. Most contractors who use it find out their number is higher than they thought. A few find out they've been overestimating and leaving bids on the table. Either way, you know.