Contractor Bid Calculator

The cost of an employee on top of their wage: employer payroll taxes, workers' compensation, unemployment insurance, health and other benefits, and paid time off. It is usually expressed as a % of wages.

Add up a year of payroll taxes, workers' comp, insurance and benefits, then divide by the wages paid. $18,000 of burden on $60,000 of wages is a 30% burden rate.

Markup is profit ÷ cost; margin is profit ÷ bid price. A 10% markup on a $9,098.80 cost is only a 9.1% margin, so pricing with markup when you mean margin leaves money on the table.

Tracking every cost a job uses (materials, labor with burden, subcontractors and equipment) so you can price the next bid and check whether this one made money.

There is no single construction figure, but two references help. Employer FICA alone is 7.65% of wages (6.2% Social Security on wages up to $184,500 in 2026, plus 1.45% Medicare). For a national benchmark across all private industry, the BLS reports that in June 2026 employers paid $14.07 an hour in benefits on top of $32.82 in wages, about 42.9% of wages. BLS counts paid leave as a benefit; if you keep paid leave inside wages, your rate will be lower. The 30% on this page is only an example input.

The hourly wage plus labor burden: wage × (1 + burden rate). $28 an hour with a 30% burden is $36.40. Some contractors also load overhead into the hourly rate; adding 15% overhead gives $41.86 an hour. This calculator keeps overhead as a separate line so you can see it.

Overhead is what it costs to run the business between jobs: office, vehicles, insurance, software and admin time. Profit is what is left after every cost, including overhead. Overhead is added on direct job cost, then profit is added on top of that break-even price.

No government or standards body sets a percentage. Your overhead rate should come from your own books: last year's overhead divided by last year's direct job costs. You will often hear '10 and 10' (10% overhead plus 10% profit), especially in insurance repair work; treat it as an example, not a rule. On the $7,912 direct cost here, 10 and 10 gives $791.20 overhead, $870.32 profit and a $9,573.52 bid, which is 21% above direct cost, because the profit is added on cost that already includes overhead.

Price materials and subcontractors from quotes, estimate labor hours and multiply by your fully burdened labor rate, add overhead as a % of those direct costs, then add profit. Never bid below the break-even price.