💼 Total Compensation (TC) & Salary Calculator
Calculate and negotiate your true total compensation (TC) package including base salary, annual bonus, stock equity (RSUs), 401(k) match, and benefits.
What Total Compensation (TC) & Salary Calculator Does
Base salary is the number people compare offers on, and on the default inputs here it is only 69.4% of what the job actually pays. This calculator adds the bonus, the annual value of equity, the employer 401(k) match and the employer share of health premiums to produce a total compensation figure, then expresses that total as an hourly rate.
Paid time off is handled differently here from most total-compensation calculators, deliberately. Employer tools commonly price PTO at your daily rate and add it to the package total. For a salaried employee that double-counts: you are paid the same whether you take the day or not, so the days are already inside base salary. What leave genuinely changes is how many hours you work for that money — which is why the PTO input here drives the hourly rate instead of the total.
That distinction is not cosmetic. Dividing by a flat 2,080 hours assumes you work every weekday of the year. Twenty days of leave is 160 hours you are paid for and do not work, so the real rate on the defaults is $90.00 an hour rather than the $83.08 a flat divisor reports — 8.3% understated, and the gap widens with every extra day of leave.
How to Use Total Compensation (TC) & Salary Calculator
- Enter base salary, expected annual bonus, and equity RSUs
- Input 401(k) employer match percentage and benefit values
- Review total annualized compensation and effective hourly rate
Formula Used by Total Compensation (TC) & Salary Calculator
Total compensation
Total = base + bonus + equity + (base × match %) + employer health contribution
- equity
- Annual value of RSUs or options — a four-year grant divided by four, not the headline grant
- match %
- Employer 401(k) match as a percentage of base salary
- employer health contribution
- The premium your employer pays, not the part deducted from your cheque
Worked example
The defaults: $120,000 base, $15,000 bonus, $25,000 annual equity, 4% match, $8,000 of employer-paid health premium.
- 401(k) match: 120,000 × 4% = $4,800
- Total: 120,000 + 15,000 + 25,000 + 4,800 + 8,000
Result: $172,800. Base salary is 69.4% of that — so 30.6% of the package is invisible if you compare offers on base alone.
Hourly rate over hours actually worked
Hourly = Total compensation ÷ (2,080 − PTO days × 8)
- 2,080
- 40 hours × 52 weeks — the standard full-year assumption
- PTO days × 8
- Paid hours you do not work. Twenty days is 160 hours
Worked example
$172,800 of total compensation with 20 days of paid leave.
- Hours worked: 2,080 − (20 × 8) = 1,920
- Hourly: 172,800 ÷ 1,920 = $90.00
- Against a flat divisor: 172,800 ÷ 2,080 = $83.08
Result: $90.00 an hour, not $83.08. The 8.3% difference is exactly the leave — and it is the only place leave belongs in this calculation.
Same $172,800 Package, Different Leave
Total compensation held constant. Only the days of paid leave change, so only the hours worked change.
| PTO days | Paid hours not worked | Hours actually worked | Effective hourly | vs a flat 2,080 divisor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | 2,080 | $83.08 | — |
| 10 | 80 | 2,000 | $86.40 | +4.0% |
| 15 | 120 | 1,960 | $88.16 | +6.1% |
| 20 | 160 | 1,920 | $90.00 | +8.3% |
| 25 | 200 | 1,880 | $91.91 | +10.6% |
| 30 | 240 | 1,840 | $93.91 | +13.0% |
Two Offers, and Why Base Salary Picks the Wrong One
Offer A pays $10,000 more in base. Offer B is worth 35% more per hour worked. Both computed with the formulas above.
| Offer A | Offer B | |
|---|---|---|
| Base salary | $130,000 | $120,000 |
| Bonus | $0 | $15,000 |
| Annual equity | $0 | $25,000 |
| 401(k) match | $0 | $4,800 |
| Employer health premium | $6,000 | $8,000 |
| Total compensation | $136,000 | $172,800 |
| Paid leave | 10 days | 25 days |
| Hours actually worked | 2,000 | 1,880 |
| Effective hourly | $68.00 | $91.91 |
The Federal Benchmark: Wages as a Share of Compensation
BLS measures employer compensation costs PER HOUR WORKED — the same denominator this calculator uses, and the reason it uses it. June 2026 data, released 9 September 2026. Our default package is 69.4% base salary, against 68.5% wages for full-time private industry workers.
| Group | Total per hour worked | Wages | Benefits | Wages as % of total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Civilian workers | $49.46 | $33.85 | $15.61 | 68.4% |
| Private industry, all | $46.89 | $32.82 | $14.07 | 70.0% |
| Private industry, full-time | $54.00 | $36.97 | $17.03 | 68.5% |
| Private industry, part-time | $25.20 | $20.15 | $5.05 | 80.0% |
| State and local government | $66.45 | $40.67 | $25.78 | 61.2% |
Source: BLS — Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026
What a Day of Leave Is Worth at Base Salary
Daily rate is base ÷ 260 working days. Shown because it is the figure employer calculators add to the package total — useful for comparing two offers' leave, but not additional money.
| Base salary | One day | 20 days | 25 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| $60,000 | $230.77 | $4,615 | $5,769 |
| $90,000 | $346.15 | $6,923 | $8,654 |
| $120,000 | $461.54 | $9,231 | $11,538 |
| $180,000 | $692.31 | $13,846 | $17,308 |
How to Read Your Result
Per hour worked is how the federal statistics do it too
The choice to divide by hours actually worked rather than a flat 2,080 is not a stylistic one. The Bureau of Labor Statistics measures employer compensation costs per hour worked, and it counts employer spending on paid leave as a benefit cost recovered over the hours that are worked — $4.40 an hour, 8.1% of total compensation for full-time private industry workers in June 2026. Pricing leave as an addition to the package and then dividing by every weekday of the year counts it twice. The corroboration is worth noting as well: the default package here is 69.4% base salary, and BLS puts wages at 68.5% of compensation for full-time private industry workers.
The 401(k) match is only yours if you contribute
A 4% match is worth $4,800 on a $120,000 salary, and it is worth exactly $0 if you do not put in enough to earn it. This calculator assumes you contribute at least to the match, which is the standard assumption and also the standard mistake — leaving a full match unclaimed is turning down part of the offer. Check the vesting schedule too: an employer match on a multi-year cliff is not money you have until you have stayed long enough to keep it.
Equity is the number most often misread
Enter the annual value, not the grant. A "$100,000 equity package" is normally a four-year grant worth $25,000 a year, and comparing that headline against another offer's annual figure overstates it fourfold. For public-company RSUs the annual value is reasonably solid; for private-company options it is a guess resting on a valuation that may never be realized, and treating it as equivalent to cash is how people talk themselves into a lower salary.
Negotiate the component with the fewest constraints
Base salary is usually bounded by a band tied to the level, which is why "that is the top of the range" is often true. Signing bonus, equity refresh, start date and leave are frequently governed by looser rules, and a one-time bonus costs the employer once while a salary increase compounds through every future raise. The table above shows the corollary: a package can be worth substantially more per hour without the base moving at all.
What this does not value
No figure here captures a commute, remote flexibility, the employee share of premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums, tuition support, or how good the health plan actually is when you use it. A plan with a $6,000 employer premium and a $7,000 deductible can be worth less in practice than one with a $5,000 premium and a $1,000 deductible. Total compensation is a floor for comparison, not the whole comparison.
Limitations & Accuracy Notes
- Paid time off is excluded from the total by design, because a salaried employee is paid the same whether leave is taken or not. It affects the hourly rate only. Employer calculators that add it to the package total will therefore report a larger number than this one.
- Assumes you contribute enough to receive the full 401(k) match, and ignores vesting schedules on both the match and any equity.
- Equity is entered as a flat annual dollar value. It does not model vesting cliffs, refreshers, strike prices, option exercise cost, dilution, or the possibility that private-company equity is worth nothing.
- Pre-tax throughout. Base, bonus and RSU income are taxed differently — supplemental withholding on bonuses, ordinary income at vest for RSUs — and none of that is applied here.
- Health benefits are entered as a single employer-contribution figure. Deductibles, out-of-pocket maximums, network quality and the employee premium share are not captured.
- The hourly rate assumes a 40-hour week. If the job actually runs 55 hours, divide by the hours you will really work — a salaried role has no overtime protection unless it is non-exempt.
- US-centric: 401(k), RSUs and employer-paid health premiums are US employment structures, and the 2,080-hour and 260-day conventions are US norms.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Total Compensation (TC)?
How does this help during job offer negotiations?
How much is a small raise worth over a career?
Should I give a number first?
What besides base salary is negotiable?
How do I compare two offers with different structures?
Is my salary data stored?
References & Further Reading
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Employer Costs for Employee Compensation — The federal measure of how much of total compensation is wages against benefits, which is the split this calculator is built around
- U.S. Department of Labor — Vacation Leave — Confirms that paid vacation is not required by federal law and is a matter of agreement between employer and employee — which is why leave is genuinely negotiable
- IRS — 401(k) Plan Overview — Employer matching contributions, vesting and the contribution limits that constrain how much of a match can be captured