Labor & Crew Cost Estimator
Build a crew role by role, apply your labor burden, and get the burdened cost per hour, per day, and for the whole job. Mix headcounts and wages to model a real crew — a foreman, two journeymen, an apprentice — and the burden factor turns base wages into what the crew actually costs you to field. Free, no login.
Crew
Burdened Cost
Enter at least one wage
How this calculator works
The math is a straight cost chain — no lookup tables, nothing hidden:
crew $/hr = Σ (count × wage) × (1 + burden%) · $/day = $/hr × hours · total = $/day × days
The number that decides whether the output is real is the burden percentage — and that one is yours, not ours. The 35% default is a heuristic, not a standard: labor burden commonly runs somewhere around 25–40% of base wages in practice, but it swings widely with your state, trade, claims history, and benefits package. Build your own from actuals: payroll taxes (FICA is 7.65% everywhere; FUTA/SUTA vary), workers’ comp at your trade’s rate per $100 of payroll, liability insurance, health/retirement benefits, and paid time off. Union shops should use the fringe package from the agreement instead. If your books say 42%, enter 42 — the field is editable precisely because the default is not an answer.
Worked example
A four-person crew for a one-week (5-day, 8-hour) job: one foreman at $42/hr, two journeymen at $34/hr, one apprentice at $22/hr, 35% burden:
- Base crew wage: (1 × 42) + (2 × 34) + (1 × 22) = $132.00/hr.
- Burdened: 132 × 1.35 = $178.20/hr — an average of $44.55 per worker-hour.
- Per day: 178.20 × 8 = $1,425.60; for the week: 1,425.60 × 5 = $7,128.00.
Enter the same crew above (three roles, burden 35, 8 hours, 5 days) to reproduce it. Note the burden added $1,848 to the week — the cost that vanishes from a bid built on bare wages.
Reference: what burden does to a $30/hr wage
Illustrative only — the rows are burden rates applied to a $30/hr base by the same engine as the calculator, to show how fast the true cost moves. Your real burden comes from your own books, not this table.
| Burden | Burdened rate | Cost per 8-hr day |
|---|---|---|
| 0% | $30.00/hr | $240.00 |
| 15% | $34.50/hr | $276.00 |
| 25% | $37.50/hr | $300.00 |
| 30% | $39.00/hr | $312.00 |
| 35% | $40.50/hr | $324.00 |
| 40% | $42.00/hr | $336.00 |
| 50% | $45.00/hr | $360.00 |
Frequently asked questions
What is labor burden?
Labor burden is everything you pay for an employee beyond the base wage: employer payroll taxes (Social Security, Medicare, federal and state unemployment), workers’ compensation premiums, liability insurance tied to payroll, and benefits like health coverage, retirement match, and paid time off. It is real cost you incur for every hour worked, which is why estimating from raw wages understates labor every time.
How do I calculate my labor burden percentage?
Add up your annual employer-paid labor costs beyond wages — payroll taxes, workers’ comp, insurance, benefits, paid leave — and divide by annual base wages. Rates vary widely with your state, trade, workers’ comp classification, and benefits package, so there is no universal number; typical construction figures run anywhere from the mid-20s to 50-plus percent. The 35% default here is only a placeholder — replace it with the figure from your own books or your accountant.
What is a burdened labor rate?
Base wage × (1 + burden%): a $30/hr carpenter at 35% burden actually costs you $40.50/hr. That is the formula this calculator applies to every role in the crew. Bid from burdened rates, not wages — the gap between the two is margin you never had.
How do I calculate crew cost per hour?
Sum each role’s burdened rate times headcount. A crew of one foreman at $42 and three laborers at $24, all at 35% burden, costs (1 × 42 + 3 × 24) × 1.35 = $153.90 per hour. The calculator does this across as many roles as you add, then extends it by hours per day and days for the daily and project totals.
Does this include overtime, per diem, or small tools?
Not directly — the math is straight time at the wages you enter. Model overtime by adding a separate role line at 1.5× the wage for the OT hours, or by blending it into the wage. Per diem, travel, and small-tools allowances can either be folded into your burden percentage or carried as separate estimate line items; just be consistent so you do not double-count them.
Method: crew cost = Σ(count × wage) × (1 + burden%) × hours × days — transparent arithmetic on inputs you control. No code or standard sets a labor burden; the 25–40% range stated above is common practice, not a citation, and the only defensible number is one computed from your own payroll taxes, workers’ comp, insurance, benefits, and PTO. This is a cost estimator, not a pricing tool — it deliberately excludes overhead allocation, small tools, per diem, and profit, and it assumes straight time (model overtime by adding a role at the OT wage). What the crew costs is this page; what to charge for it is the markup page.
Pair with the Markup & Margin Calculator to turn burdened cost into a defensible price, the Equipment Fuel Cost Calculator for the machine side of the daily spend, or the Regional Cost Index to sanity-check wage levels by metro.