Pay Raise Calculator

The check that covers a raise is a blend

A raise rarely starts on the first day of a pay period. When the effective date lands inside one, that period contains days paid at the old rate and days paid at the new one, and the check that covers it is neither figure.

The two halves of that period are not equal, so the check is not the average of the two figures. Nine days out of fourteen carry the old rate and five carry the new one, which is why $1,620.00 sits closer to the old check than to the new one. The check after it is the first full one at $1,656.00.

The split here counts calendar days. Payroll systems also prorate by scheduled hours or by days actually worked, and a period with a holiday or a day off can give a different blend from the same effective date. The tool states the convention it applies rather than guessing at yours: days at the old rate over days in the period, plus days at the new rate over days in the period.

Two cases fall out of the same arithmetic. An effective date on the first day of a period gives zero old days, so the first check is a full new check — set the effective date equal to the period start above and the blended figure equals the new one. An effective date after a period has closed leaves that period untouched, so the blend applies to the next period the date falls in.

One raise, four pay frequencies

A yearly increase is a fixed sum. How it reaches you depends on how many checks the year is cut into, so the same $1,456.00 is $28.00 a week and $121.33 a month.

$41,600.00 to $43,056.00 — the same raise on four schedules

Weekly divides the year into 52 checks, biweekly into 26, semi-monthly into 24 and monthly into 12. The last two columns are the annual figure divided by that count, rounded to the cent, so the four “more per check” figures do not add up to the same total — the rounding is per check, not per year.

The semi-monthly column is the one that catches people out. Twenty-four checks of $1,794.00 is $43,056.00, but a raise quoted per check usually is not the yearly increase divided by 24 — it is whatever the payroll system rounds to, and the difference shows up at the end of the year. Biweekly is the friendlier of the two: 26 is exactly half of 52, so a yearly increase divides evenly and each check moves by the same amount as two weeks of the raise.

The yearly figure and this year’s figure are different numbers

A 3.5% raise is worth $1,456.00 over twelve months at the new rate. It is not worth $1,456.00 in the calendar year it starts, unless it starts in January.

That is why a raise letter and a first payslip rarely agree with the yearly figure a person works out in their head. The letter quotes the annualised value; the payslip covers one period, and the year of the raise covers a fraction of it. Neither number is wrong — they answer different questions.

This page does not prorate the calendar year. It reports the annual figure, the per-check figure and the blended check, and leaves the part-year total to the arithmetic above: weeks at the new rate divided by 52, multiplied by the yearly increase.

Overtime: the premium moves with the rate

A raise does not only lift the hours paid at the regular rate. Where overtime is paid at one and a half times the regular rate, the premium is computed on the new rate, so every overtime hour is worth more than it was by more than the raise itself.

The extra $0.35 an hour is the half-rate premium applied to the raise itself — $0.70 × 0.5 — and it is the part of a raise that never appears in a percentage quoted on an annual salary. Someone who works no overtime sees the plain increase; someone who works five hours a week sees $1,456.00 plus $273.00.

Two things this arithmetic does not settle. Whether a given job is entitled to overtime at all depends on how it is classified, and a raise that moves someone from hourly to a salary can change that classification. And where a state sets a daily overtime threshold, the hours that count as overtime are a separate question from the rate they are paid at — the overtime calculator splits the hours, this page prices the rate.

A gross raise is not a net raise

Every figure on this page is gross pay. Withholding is taken from the increase at whatever rate applies to those dollars, so a 3.5% gross raise does not produce a 3.5% rise in take-home pay. The gap is not a mistake in the arithmetic; it is the difference between the number on the offer letter and the number in the bank.

The common worry is that a raise can push a whole paycheck into a higher tax bracket and leave someone worse off. Income tax is charged in bands: the dollars below a threshold are taxed at the lower rate and only the dollars above it at the higher one, so a raise raises the tax on the increase, not on everything underneath. This page prints no tax figures and does not model withholding — for the gross-to-net chain, use the paycheck calculator with overtime.

Deductions behave differently again. A premium that is a fixed dollar amount does not move with a raise, so it takes a smaller share of a bigger check; a premium charged as a percentage moves with it. Neither is part of this calculation.

What this page does not do

• No tax and no deductions. Every figure is gross. The paycheck calculator covers federal withholding, Social Security and Medicare.
• No exemption test. Whether a salary is high enough to be exempt from overtime is set by regulation and changes; nothing here checks it, and a raise that crosses that line is not flagged.
• No retroactive pay. If a raise is applied months after its effective date, the catch-up payment on past periods is a separate calculation from the blended check shown here.
• No cost-of-living index. A raise and a price index are different measurements; this page compares two pay rates and nothing else.
• No employer policy. When a raise is announced, when payroll applies it and whether it is prorated at all are employer decisions the tool cannot see.
• No compounding across years. Each raise is calculated on the pay entered, not on a series of raises stacked over several years.

Questions people actually ask

Related pages

General information only — not tax, legal or payroll advice. Every figure is gross pay, the blended check prorates by calendar days, which is one convention among several, and the hours a week entered here are assumed to be worked every week of the year.