Pay raise calculator
Turn a raise percent into a dollar amount and a paycheque, or go the other way and solve the percent from a current and a new salary. No tax assumption: this is the gross number an offer letter states.
Worked example — A 3% raise on $72,000: +$2,160 a year. New salary $74,160, paid biweekly: $83.08 more each cheque, before tax
Price a raise, either direction
Enter a salary and a raise percent for the dollar amount, or a salary and the offered new salary to solve the percent between them. Every figure is gross: no withholding, no bracket, no FICA. That is a separate, more involved question this page deliberately does not answer.
$72,000, 3% raise, biweekly: A typical annual merit increase on a typical salary, paid every two weeks.
A straight line on purpose: the dollar increase is the salary times the percent, with nothing else in it.
How much a 3% raise is on $72,000
A 3% raise on $72,000 is $2,160 a year, taking the salary to $74,160. Paid biweekly, that lands as $83.08 more on each of 26 paycheques, before any withholding is taken out.
The same 3% on $95,000 at semimonthly pay is a different per-cheque number even though the rate is the same: $2,850 a year comes to $118.75 on each of 24 cheques rather than 26, which is why the pay frequency is its own input above and not folded into the percent.
Dollar and biweekly increase by raise percent and salary
Annual dollar increase across a spread of common salaries and raise percents. Divide any figure by 26 for the biweekly amount, by 24 for semimonthly, or by 12 for monthly: a $4,000 raise on $80,000 at 5% is $153.85 every biweekly paycheque.
| Raise | $40,000 | $60,000 | $80,000 | $100,000 | $150,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2% | $800 | $1,200 | $1,600 | $2,000 | $3,000 |
| 3% | $1,200 | $1,800 | $2,400 | $3,000 | $4,500 |
| 4% | $1,600 | $2,400 | $3,200 | $4,000 | $6,000 |
| 5% | $2,000 | $3,000 | $4,000 | $5,000 | $7,500 |
| 7% | $2,800 | $4,200 | $5,600 | $7,000 | $10,500 |
| 10% | $4,000 | $6,000 | $8,000 | $10,000 | $15,000 |
| 15% | $6,000 | $9,000 | $12,000 | $15,000 | $22,500 |
| 20% | $8,000 | $12,000 | $16,000 | $20,000 | $30,000 |
Every cell is the starting salary times the percent, nothing compounded across rows or columns: the 10% row at $150,000 is $15,000, exactly 3.75 times the 10% row at $40,000 ($4,000), because $150,000 is 3.75 times $40,000.
What raise percent gets you from $72,000 to $78,500
9.03%. The $6,500 difference is measured against the $72,000 you were making before the raise, not against the $78,500 you land on: dividing by the new salary instead gives 8.28%, a smaller and wrong number, because a raise is always quoted against what you made before it.
Paid biweekly, that percent is $250.00 more on every paycheque. Run the reverse trip and the percent is not the same number with a minus sign in front of it: going from $78,500 back down to $72,000 is a 8.28% pay cut, not a 9.03% one, because the base salary the percent is measured against changed too.
Is your raise actually a raise after inflation?
Only if it beats inflation. Every figure on this page is a dollar amount, and every one of them is positive as long as the percent typed in is positive. A cost of living raise that merely matches the rise in prices leaves real buying power exactly flat, and one that falls short of it is a pay cut with a positive number printed on the offer letter. A 3% raise like the preset above is genuine progress against 2% inflation and a real loss against 4% inflation, and this page has no way to tell which, because it holds no inflation data by design.
The raise vs inflation calculator answers that question directly, compounding an actual raise history against realised CPI-U rather than one flat rate, and reports the year real pay peaked. Run the dollar figure from here through that page before deciding whether a raise is actually ahead.
The next question after this one
Take-home pay after a raise calculatorCalculatorThis page is gross only. That one applies FICA and the bracket the raise crosses to see what actually reaches the paycheque.Open nextOther questions
- Hourly to salary calculatorCalculatorSee the new salary broken into every pay frequency at once, with the hours and weeks worked exposed rather than assumed.
- Raise vs inflation calculatorCalculatorA nominal raise is not a real one. Compound it against realised CPI-U to see whether it outran the cost of living.
All 130 calculatorsHow JMM sources and checks its numbersWhat stays free, and what early access would add
More calculators for the same paycheque
The take-home-after-a-raise calculator applies FICA and the bracket a raise crosses, the hourly to salary calculator breaks the same pay into every frequency at once, and the raise vs inflation calculator checks a raise history against realised CPI-U instead of one flat rate.