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Pay Raise Calculator

See what a raise is worth as a new rate, a percentage and a paycheck.

Pay is
Raise given as

A cut is a negative number.

Optional. The same percentage, every year.

Optional. From the news, or your own guess.

The week behind the pay

Your new payExample

$26.00

+4.00% · +$1.00 an hour

Enter your pay and the raise to see what it is worth.

What this answers

What a raise is worth in money you can picture. A raise is announced as a percentage and felt in each paycheck, so this page gives both, together with the new rate. Give the raise however you were told it: as a percentage, as an amount, or as the new pay.

To see a pay in another unit instead, the Hourly to Salary Calculator and the Salary to Hourly Calculator convert it.

A worked example

$25.00 an hour, a 4% raise, 40 hours a week for 52 weeks:

  • New rate: $25.00 × 1.04 = $26.00 an hour
  • A year: $52,000 becomes $54,080, which is $2,080 more
  • Each week: $40.00 more
  • Every two weeks: $80.00 more
  • Each month: $2,080 ÷ 12 = $173.33 more

Raises compound

Each raise is a percentage of a pay the last one already increased. So 3% a year for ten years is not 30%: $60,000 grows to $80,634.98, which is 34.39% more, and the ten years together pay $108,467.74 more than staying at $60,000 would have. Enter a number of years to see the table.

A raise and inflation

If prices rose faster than your pay, the raise is a cut in what your pay can buy. Enter the inflation rate for the same year and the page will say which it is. There is no inflation figure built in, because any figure written into this page would be out of date within a month.

What this leaves out

Tax and deductions, which depend on where you live and change every year: every figure here is gross. It also leaves out a raise that starts part-way through a year. If your raise changes what your overtime is worth, the Overtime Calculator works out a week at the new rate.

Questions

How do I calculate a raise percentage?

Subtract your old pay from your new pay, divide by your old pay, and multiply by 100. Going from $25.00 to $27.00 an hour is $2.00 ÷ $25.00 = 0.08, an 8% raise.

What percentage raise is good?

Judge it against two things rather than a single number. Against prices: a raise smaller than inflation over the same year is a pay cut in what your money buys — enter both on this page and it will tell you which it is. Against the market: what the same job pays elsewhere, which job listings and your industry’s published pay data show better than any rule of thumb.

Why is a 3% raise for ten years more than 30%?

Because each raise is a percentage of a pay the last raise already increased. Ten raises of 3% multiply your pay by 1.03 ten times, which is 1.3439 — a 34.39% raise in all. On $60,000 that is $80,634.98 in year ten, not $78,000.

Is a raise below inflation a pay cut?

In what your pay can buy, yes. A 3% raise in a year when prices rose 4.5% leaves you 1.44% worse off. That figure is the ratio 1.03 ÷ 1.045, not 3 − 4.5: the simple difference is close, but not the same.

Does a raise change my overtime rate?

Yes. Overtime is paid at a multiple of your regular rate, so a raise from $25.00 to $26.00 an hour moves time and a half from $37.50 to $39.00. The Overtime Calculator works out a week at the new rate.

If I take a 10% cut and then a 10% raise, am I back where I started?

No — 1% short. $25.00 cut by 10% is $22.50, and 10% of $22.50 is only $2.25, so the raise brings you to $24.75. A cut is a percentage of a larger pay than the raise that follows it.

Is my pay sent anywhere?

No. The page is static and the arithmetic runs on your own machine. Nothing you type is sent, and nothing is kept between visits.