If you charge customers the same hourly rate you pay your workers, you can end up losing money on jobs. Your labour rate needs to cover payroll burden, hours you can’t bill, monthly overhead, and a profit margin. This fully loaded labour rate calculator puts those costs together so you can work out what to charge.
Calculate your labour rate
Calculated from your inputs. Your target rate for quotes.
See how this was calculated
| Annual pay | — |
| Employer burden | — |
| Overhead (× 12 months) | — |
| Annual loaded cost | — |
| Billable hours / year | — |
Break-even = annual loaded cost ÷ billable hours. Rate with profit = break-even ÷ (1 − profit%).
How to read your result
Hourly wage $30.00, employer burden 20%, 2,080 paid hours/year, 70% utilization, overhead $500/month, target profit 15%.
Annual loaded cost: $80,880 · Billable hours: 1,456
Loaded cost per paid hour: $38.88
Break-even billable rate: $55.55
Rate with 15% profit: $65.35
These are placeholder numbers to show how the math works — enter your own figures above.
Which trades is this for?
Any trade with techs, crews or subcontractors on the payroll. Your charge-out rate needs to cover the full cost of that labour.
- HVAC, plumbing & electrical: techs dispatched daily; the hourly rate must cover payroll burden and overhead.
- Landscaping: crews and seasonal staff make the true hourly cost easy to underestimate.
- Cleaning: teams of cleaners need per-hour pricing that covers their loaded cost.
- General contracting: mixed crews working across different job types, with an hourly rate that needs to cover their costs.
Assumptions & limits
- CPP/EI figures are your own estimates. Nothing on this page hard-codes CRA rates — check your numbers against CRA for the tax year shown before using them to quote jobs.
- Overhead is averaged, not job-costed. Spreading rent, phones, software, and vehicle costs evenly across the year works for setting a rate, but individual job costs can still vary.
- Utilization makes a big difference. Moving from 60% to 80% billable changes your break-even rate far more than trimming a few percent of overhead — be realistic about non-billable time.
- Currency is display only. Switching USD/CAD changes the label, not the math — enter figures in the currency you chose.
- This is a planning estimate, not financial or tax advice. Talk to your accountant before making pricing or payroll decisions.
Common questions
What counts as overhead?
Anything you pay whether or not you’re on a job: shop or office rent, phones, business software, vehicle costs, insurance, accounting. If you’d still pay it during a slow week, it belongs in overhead.
What utilization should I target?
There’s no universal right number — drive time, quoting, callbacks, and admin all take up hours you can’t bill. Start with what you actually billed last month, rather than what you hope to bill, and adjust from there.
Does this work for employees and owner-operators?
Both. For an employee, enter their wage and your employer burden. For an owner-operator, enter the pay you’d need to take home — the calculator treats it the same way.
Why is my break-even rate so much higher than my wage?
Your break-even rate includes employer burden on top of wages and overhead spread across the year. It also accounts for hours you can’t bill. A $30 wage at 70% utilization with modest overhead breaking even near $55 is normal math, not a mistake.
Related free tools
Related reading
Take this further
Disclosure: TradeProStack is reader-supported. The links below are affiliate links — if you buy through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Placement here never changes our reviews or scores.
Schedule your team and keep true labour costs visible against every job you price.
Try WorkizRead our Workiz review