Constructelligence
Overview
Free tools Pricing Demo Join the beta
Constructelligence › Free tools › Labor burden & overtime

Construction labor burden calculator

The wage on the timecard is not what an hour of labor costs. Add payroll burden and fringe to get the loaded rate, then see what overtime and double time really add across a crew — the figure to compare with a budget line priced at base rate.

Free, no sign-upRuns in your browser — nothing is sent anywhereFormulas shownCopy a link to share your numbers
Tool 04

Labour burden and overtime premium

A journeyman at $42 an hour does not cost $42 an hour. Burden, fringe and payroll taxes usually add thirty to forty percent, and overtime adds half again on top of that. This is the number to use when you price a change order or decide whether the weekend is worth it.

Crew inputs

Result

Loaded rate = base × (1 + burden%) + fringe. Straight-time cost = loaded × hours. Overtime premium = base × 0.5 × OT hours (the half again that overtime adds — the other half is the hour the crew would have worked anyway). Double-time premium = base × 1.0 × DT hours. True cost per hour = total ÷ hours, which is the figure to use when you compare it with a budget line that was priced at base rate.

How to use it

  1. Enter the base hourly wage.
  2. Enter payroll burden (taxes, insurance, workers’ comp) as a percentage, and fringe per hour.
  3. Enter straight-time, overtime and double-time hours for a week.
  4. Enter crew size to see the weekly cost across the crew.

A worked example

A $42 base wage with 32% burden and $12 fringe is a $67.44 loaded rate. Ten overtime hours add $210 of premium per worker — for a crew of eight, $1,680 a week that a base-rate budget never saw.
Want the background? The guide works through the arithmetic, the mistakes that hide problems, and a checklist.
Read: Construction labor forecasting →

Questions

What is labor burden in construction?

The cost of employing someone on top of their wage: payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, benefits and other statutory costs, usually expressed as a percentage of wages.

How do you calculate a loaded labor rate?

Base wage × (1 + burden %) + fringe per hour.

How much does overtime really cost?

The premium is half the base wage for each overtime hour (double time adds a full base wage), on top of the loaded cost of the hour itself.

What is a typical labor burden percentage?

It varies widely by trade, state and workers’ comp class; use your own payroll data rather than a rule of thumb.

More free calculators

Construction schedule health checkPaste or upload an activity list — exported from Primavera P6, Microsoft Project, Excel or CSV — and see…Construction labor burden calculatorThe wage on the timecard is not what an hour of labor costs. Add payroll burden and fringe to get the loaded…Construction cost overrun calculatorFind out where a job will finish while there is still time to change it. Enter the budget, what has been…All free construction calculatorsEight tools, one page — overrun, WIP, schedule, labor, markup, change orders, pay apps, overhead.

Want this on your live data, every morning?

These tools are manual. The dashboard does the same arithmetic across every job, every company and every week — plus the money-at-risk view, the audit findings and the overrun radar. Join the private beta and we will connect it to the systems you already run.