Pay raise calculator

In short: A pay raise percentage is the new pay minus the old pay, divided by the old pay, times 100. A 4% raise on $60,000.00 a year is $2,400.00 more, $62,400.00 a year, which is $92.31 more on each biweekly paycheck before tax.

Last updated 4 November 2026

How to use the pay raise calculator

1. Enter your current pay. Type it the way you are paid: an hourly rate, a weekly or biweekly paycheck, a monthly figure or an annual salary, and choose which. Set the hours you work in a week, which turn an hourly rate into a year and back.
2. Enter the raise the way you were told it. A review letter gives a percentage, an hourly job often gives cents an hour, and an offer gives the new salary. Choose which you have; the calculator works out the other two.
3. Read it in every pay period. The table shows your pay before and after in all six periods, and the box at the top shows the raise on the paycheck schedule you choose, which is the change you will see on a pay stub.
4. Add back pay if the raise was backdated. Enter the paychecks, or the hours, already paid at the old rate since the raise took effect, and any overtime hours in that time.

Everything updates as you type and nothing leaves your browser. Copy the result as text, or copy a share link that opens the same figures, to check a payroll change with HR or compare two offers with someone at home.

The pay raise formula, both ways

There are only two sums. From a percentage to the new pay: new pay = old pay x (1 + raise / 100), so 4% on $60,000.00 is $60,000.00 x 1.04 = $62,400.00. From old and new pay to the raise percentage: (new pay - old pay) / old pay x 100, so an offer of $63,000.00 on a $60,000.00 salary is $3,000.00 / $60,000.00 x 100 = 5%.

An hourly raise works the same way. A raise from $17.50 to $18.25 an hour is 75 cents, or 4.29%, and at 40 hours a week it is worth $1,560.00 a year. When a percentage is applied to an hourly rate the result rarely lands on a whole cent, so the calculator rounds the new rate to the cent, as a payroll system would, and works every other period out from that rate. The example salary across all six periods:

Each period is worked out from the year and then rounded to the cent, and the difference is the rounded paycheck after minus the rounded paycheck before, which is what a pay stub will show. That is why the biweekly difference is $92.31 rather than exactly $2,400.00 / 26.

What a pay raise means per paycheck

The same salary increase looks different on each pay schedule, because the year is cut into a different number of paychecks: 52 weekly, 26 biweekly (every two weeks), 24 semi-monthly (twice a month) or 12 monthly. The table compares common raise percentages on $60,000.00 a year, with the pay after five years of the same raise each year:

For hourly pay the hours decide the yearly figure. The same 75 cents an hour is $1,560.00 a year at 40 hours a week and $1,170.00 at 30. If your hours vary, use a typical week, or add up a few weeks with the work hours calculator. To see what any hourly rate is a year without a raise, the hourly to salary calculator converts it both ways.

Retroactive pay raise: back pay and overtime

A raise is often agreed with an effective date in the past: a review finishes a month late, or a union contract is signed after the old one ran out. The paychecks in between were paid at the old rate, and the difference is owed as retro pay, also called back pay. For a salary, that is the raise per paycheck times the paychecks paid at the old rate: in the tool's example, 3 biweekly paychecks x $92.31 = $276.93.

Overtime is where most hand calculations go wrong. Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, a raise that is backdated also raises the regular rate on which overtime is paid, for the whole period it covers. The Department of Labor's interpretive rule says so directly:

So each overtime hour is owed one and a half times the raise per hour. Take a raise of 5% on $18.00 an hour, to $18.90, backdated four weeks in which the worker was paid for 160 regular hours and 12 overtime hours. The regular hours are owed 160 x $0.90 = $144.00, the overtime hours 12 x $1.35 = $16.20, and the back pay is $160.20. For a salaried worker who is paid overtime, the raise per hour is the raise in the weekly salary divided by the hours the salary is meant to pay for, the method in 29 CFR 778.113; the calculator uses your Hours a week for that.

The rule covers employees who are owed overtime under the Act; exempt salaried staff are not owed overtime under the Act, so for them back pay is just the paychecks. Whether a raise is backdated at all is up to the employer or the agreement. Count by hours when your hours changed from week to week, so the back pay follows the hours you were actually paid for.

Pay raise over years: the same raise every year

Raises compound, because each one is a percentage of the pay after the last. In the example, 4% a year takes $60,000.00 to $72,999.17 in year 5, and over those five years you earn $37,978.52 more than you would at the old salary. A 3% raise every year for 10 years ends 34.39% above where it started, not 30%. The years box in the calculator draws the table for up to 40 years, which is useful for comparing an offer with a lower salary but a better raise policy, or for checking what an annual cost of living adjustment does over a contract.

All of these are gross pay. A raise also moves your tax withholding, retirement contributions taken as a percentage and anything else based on pay, so the change in take-home pay is smaller. The IRS Tax Withholding Estimator shows how new pay changes federal withholding.

Esta calculadora también está en español: la calculadora de aumento de sueldo, con cantidades en dólares y el pago retroactivo de las horas extra según la ley federal de Estados Unidos.