Pay Raise Calculator

Background.

A 5% raise on a $60,000 salary is $3,000 a year. Paid every two weeks, it is $115.38 per check — before a cent of tax comes out. Both numbers are correct, and the gap between them is why a raise that sounded generous in the review meeting can feel small on payday.

The annual increase never changes; how it is sliced does. The same $3,000 adds $250 to a monthly paycheck, $125 to a semimonthly one, $115.38 to a biweekly one and $57.69 to a weekly one. Biweekly and semimonthly schedules are easy to mix up: 26 checks a year against 24, so for the same salary a semimonthly check is larger even though the year's total is identical. Choosing the frequency you are actually paid on is what makes the per-paycheck figures match your pay stub.

Everything here is gross pay. What reaches your bank account is smaller, because Social Security and Medicare take 7.65% of most wages, federal income tax takes your marginal rate on the extra dollars, and many states add their own tax. Pre-tax deductions that scale with salary, such as a percentage 401(k) contribution, also grow with the raise.

The calculator also gives an hourly equivalent, using the standard 2,080-hour full-time year of 40 hours for 52 weeks. That is the figure to hold against an hourly job offer or a contract rate — provided your real working week is close to 40 hours.

What is pay raise calculator?

A pay raise is an increase in base pay, usually stated as a percentage of the current salary — a merit increase, a cost-of-living adjustment or a promotion increase. The new salary is the old one multiplied by one plus the percentage as a decimal, so 5% means × 1.05 and a 10% cut, entered as −10, means × 0.90. The raise amount is the difference between the two salaries, a fixed yearly figure. The per-paycheck effect is that figure divided by the number of pay periods in a year, which is why one raise looks different on different payroll schedules.

How to use this calculator.

1. 01Enter your current gross annual salary — the figure in your offer letter or contract, before tax and deductions.
2. 02Enter the raise as a percentage. For a flat-dollar raise, divide it by your salary first: $2,000 on $60,000 is 3.33%. A pay cut is entered as a negative number.
3. 03Choose how often you are actually paid. Check a pay stub if unsure: 26 checks a year is biweekly, 24 is semimonthly, often around the 15th and the end of the month.
4. 04Read the new salary and the annual raise, then the increase per paycheck — the change you will see on your next stub, before tax.
5. 05Use the hourly equivalent only to compare with hourly pay; it assumes 40 hours a week for 52 weeks.

The formula.

The new salary is S′ = S × (1 + p ÷ 100), where S is the current annual salary and p the raise in percent. The annual raise is S′ − S. Each paycheck before and after is the annual figure divided by n, the number of pay periods: 52 weekly, 26 biweekly, 24 semimonthly, 12 monthly, or 1 for a single annual payment. The increase per paycheck is S′ ÷ n − S ÷ n, which equals the annual raise ÷ n, so a bigger n always means a smaller per-check change. The hourly equivalent is S′ ÷ 2,080, the hours in 52 forty-hour weeks. The raise must be above −100% — a cut of 100% or more would leave no salary — and the field accepts cuts down to −99%. Because each raise multiplies the salary it is applied to, repeated raises compound rather than add, and a cut followed by an equal percentage raise does not get you back where you started.

A worked example.

Frequently asked questions.

References& sources.

1. [1]U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Employment Cost Index News Release (quarterly wage and salary growth for civilian workers)
2. [2]U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — How the CPS Measures Pay
3. [3]U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division — Fact Sheet #56A: Regular Rate Under the FLSA (overtime interaction with a base-rate raise)
4. [4]Mercer — 2024/2025 US Compensation Planning Survey (salary growth and merit-increase benchmarks by industry)