FOR INDEPENDENT STAFFING AGENCIES AND RECRUITERS
You mark up the pay rate, so the markup has to carry the whole employer burden before a cent of it is profit — FICA, federal and state unemployment, the comp code the work falls under, PTO, benefits, screening, and the six weeks you fund payroll before the client pays. Put a real placement in below and see the bill rate, the burden an hour, the margin the markup actually earns, and the markup your target margin needs.
Markup vs. margin in staffing — why the usual conversion is wrong here
This calculator vs. TempWorks — what each tool is actually for
This calculator vs. a spreadsheet — why markup / (1 + markup) overstates the real margin
Employee vs. contractor cost calculator — the same employer-burden math, for a business staffing a role itself rather than billing a client for a placement
Gross margin on this placement
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Press “Price this placement” to see what it earns.
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No, and the gap is larger than the usual correction. Converting markup to margin the textbook way gives 45/145 = 31%, and that conversion is only right when the number you marked up is the whole cost. In staffing you mark up the pay rate, and every dollar of FICA, unemployment tax, workers’ compensation, PTO and benefits sits outside it. On the worked example — $22 an hour, a 3% SUTA on a $12,000 base, a $6.20 per $100 comp code, collected on net-45 — a 45% markup returns a 15.8% gross margin, not 31%. Hitting 20% would take a 52.6% markup.
Because FUTA and SUTA are charged on a wage base, not on every dollar. FUTA applies to the first $7,000 a worker earns in the year and your state’s unemployment tax to the first (commonly) $7,000 to $60,000. A worker who bills 420 hours pays almost the entire annual charge inside those 420 hours; the same worker on a 2,000-hour assignment spreads it over five times as many. This calculator charges the capped amount rather than a flat percentage, so the effect appears on its own and a 12-week placement prices differently from a year-long one without you doing anything.
The markup at which the placement finishes exactly level: burden covered, payroll funded, bad debt reserved, and nothing left. On the worked example it is 21.9%. It is worth knowing because it is the floor a negotiation can reach and not the number to quote — the distance between it and your markup is the entire profit on the placement, which is why shaving five points off a quote is a large fraction of the margin rather than a small fraction of the price.
Because you pay the worker weekly and the client pays you on net-30, net-45 or later. That money is out the door in the meantime, whether it is financed, factored, or simply your own cash not doing something else. The calculator applies your cost of capital to the loaded cost — the money actually spent, not the invoice — across the days you wait. On the worked example, net-45 at 12% costs $202 of a $2,626 profit. It is the line most markup quotes leave out entirely, and it is the one that turns a thin placement into a losing one.
You pay overtime at 1.5 times the pay rate, so a bill rate that does not also rise by 1.5 earns less margin on every overtime hour and can earn none. Set the two multipliers separately here and see it. One nuance the calculator handles: most states rate workers’ compensation on straight-time-equivalent payroll, so the half-time premium on an overtime hour is excluded from the comp payroll. Leave that box ticked unless your state does not allow the exclusion — it is a real saving on an assignment running heavy overtime, and over-reserving for it prices you out of work you could win.
Your SUTA rate and wage base are on the annual rate notice your state unemployment agency sends you; the rate is experience-rated, so it is yours and not a national figure. Your workers’ compensation rate is on your policy declarations, quoted per $100 of payroll and set by the class code the work falls under — which is why a clerical placement and a light-industrial placement in the same office are different businesses. The defaults here are illustrative starting points, not advice about which class code applies to a job.
No. There is no account and the page makes no network requests — it runs entirely in your browser. Your pay rates, markups, comp rate and the margins it works out are never sent anywhere and never appear in a usage count. The optional counter records only which features were used and the day, stored on your own device, and it switches itself off for browsers sending Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control.
No. It is arithmetic on the figures you type. It makes no determination about worker classification, which workers’ compensation class code applies, co-employment, overtime exemption, or your obligations under any state or federal law, and the rates and wage bases it starts with are illustrative and change every year. Check every figure against your own rate notices, policy declarations and payroll records, and against a qualified professional, before you quote a client from it.