A labor burden calculator adds up everything an employee costs you on top of their hourly wage: employer CPP and EI, vacation and statutory holiday pay, WSIB or WCB premiums, benefits and allowances. For a $32/hr carpenter in Ontario, those costs add about 27.5% to the wages for hours actually worked, and once you allow for unbillable time, each billable hour costs $51.01, not $32.
Open the free labour burden calculator in your browser. No login, no email, nothing to pay.
Open the free toolContruva’s free labour burden calculator is built for Canadian contractors. It’s prefilled with the 2026 CPP, CPP2 and EI figures from canada.ca, every field is editable, and it shows the burden percentage, the loaded cost per hour worked, the cost per paid hour and the true cost per billable hour, with a line-by-line breakdown. No login.
What is labor burden?
Labour burden (or labor burden, if you’re searching American sites) is the cost of employing someone beyond the wage itself. Some of it is set by law: CPP, EI, workers’ compensation, vacation pay and public holiday pay. Some of it is your choice: health and dental plans, a tool or truck allowance, a phone, boots, training.
It matters because your quotes are built on hours. If you price labour at the wage, every hour your crew works loses money before you’ve paid for the truck, the insurance or yourself. The burden rate is the number that turns a wage into a real cost.
How to use the labour burden calculator
Hourly wage, paid hours per week and the weeks they work in a year. Leave vacation weeks out; vacation pay covers them.
Vacation pay as a percentage (4% is Ontario’s minimum for the first five years) and the number of paid statutory holidays.
The 2026 rates and maximums are filled in. Change them for Quebec or for another year.
Your workers’ compensation rate per $100 of payroll, yearly benefit cost and any allowances.
The share of hours worked you can actually charge a customer for. The calculator turns everything into a cost per billable hour.
The result panel shows the true cost per billable hour, the burden percentage, the loaded cost per hour worked, the cost per paid hour and the yearly total. The table underneath breaks every cost into dollars per year, dollars per hour worked and a percentage of wages.
The labor burden formula
The calculator measures burden against the wages for hours actually on the job, because those are the hours you build quotes from.
| Number | Formula |
|---|---|
| Paid hours | hours per week × weeks worked |
| Hours worked | paid hours − statutory holiday hours |
| Base wages | wage × hours worked |
| Gross pay | base wages + holiday pay + vacation pay |
| Total cost | gross pay + CPP + CPP2 + EI + WSIB/WCB + benefits + other |
| Labor burden % | (total cost − base wages) ÷ base wages |
| Loaded cost per hour worked | total cost ÷ hours worked = wage × (1 + burden %) |
| True cost per billable hour | total cost ÷ (hours worked × billable %) |
CPP, EI and workers’ compensation are worked out on gross pay, because vacation and holiday pay are pensionable and insurable earnings too. Each one stops at its yearly maximum, which matters for higher-paid foremen and lead hands.
Worked example: a $32/hr carpenter in Ontario
A residential carpenter at $32 an hour, 40 hours a week, working 50 weeks with two weeks of vacation paid through 4% vacation pay. Nine paid public holidays. Your WSIB rate is the 2026 class rate for residential building construction, $2.18 per $100. You pay $2,400 a year toward a benefits plan and $3,000 in tool and phone allowance. About 80% of their hours on the job are billable.
| Cost | Per year | % of base wages |
|---|---|---|
| Wages for 1,928 hours worked | $61,696.00 | — |
| Statutory holiday pay (72 hours) | $2,304.00 | 3.73% |
| Vacation pay (4%) | $2,560.00 | 4.15% |
| Employer CPP (5.95%) | $3,752.07 | 6.08% |
| Employer CPP2 | $0.00 | 0% |
| Employer EI ($2.282 per $100) | $1,518.90 | 2.46% |
| WSIB ($2.18 per $100) | $1,451.01 | 2.35% |
| Health and dental benefits | $2,400.00 | 3.89% |
| Tool and phone allowance | $3,000.00 | 4.86% |
| Total yearly cost | $78,681.98 | 127.5% |
Burden 27.5% · Loaded cost $40.81 per hour worked · $39.34 per paid hour · $51.01 per billable hour
The gross pay is $66,560, under the $74,600 YMPE, so there’s no CPP2 to pay. The $16,985.98 of burden works out to $8.81 for every hour the carpenter is on site. Then the 20% of time that can’t be billed (the morning at the supplier, the shop day, the callback you don’t charge for) spreads the whole $78,681.98 over 1,542.4 billable hours instead of 1,928, and the real cost of a billable hour lands at $51.01.
2026 CPP, EI and WSIB figures
These are the defaults in the calculator, from canada.ca and the WSIB (checked November 2026). They change every January, so check them when you update your rates.
| Item | 2026 figure | Employer cost |
|---|---|---|
| CPP contribution rate | 5.95% | Matches the employee’s contribution |
| Year’s maximum pensionable earnings (YMPE) | $74,600 | Max $4,230.45 per employee |
| CPP basic exemption | $3,500 | No CPP on the first $3,500 a year |
| CPP2 rate | 4% | On earnings between the YMPE and YAMPE |
| Year’s additional maximum (YAMPE) | $85,000 | Max $416 per employee |
| EI premium, employee | $1.63 per $100 | Employer pays 1.4 times: $2.282 per $100 |
| EI maximum insurable earnings | $68,900 | Max $1,572.30 per employee |
| WSIB class G1, residential building construction (Ontario) | $2.18 per $100 | Up to $121,700 of earnings |
Sources: the CPP 2026 figures on canada.ca, the 2026 EI premium rate announcement and the WSIB 2026 premium rates.
A few things the defaults don’t cover. Quebec employers pay QPP instead of CPP, QPIP for parental insurance, and a lower EI rate ($1.30 per $100 for employees in 2026, so $1.82 for employers), so change those fields. Workers’ compensation is set by each province’s board and by trade, and your own rate can differ from the class rate, so use the number on your statement. The calculator doesn’t apply the WSIB or WCB earnings ceiling, which only matters for very high earners. Public holidays differ by province, and Ontario has special rules for some construction employees who get vacation and holiday pay as a percentage of wages; check the Employment Standards Act guide. This is an estimate, not payroll or tax advice.
Billable hours: the cost most contractors miss
The payroll costs are fixed by law. The billable share is where the money really leaks. Every hour you pay for but can’t put on a customer’s invoice makes every billable hour more expensive.
| Billable share | Billable hours | Cost per billable hour |
|---|---|---|
| 100% | 1,928 | $40.81 |
| 80% | 1,542.4 | $51.01 |
Look at your own crew’s week honestly: driving between jobs, picking up material, cleaning the truck, estimating visits, warranty callbacks, weather days, training. None of it is billable unless you price it in. The calculator lets you test what tighter scheduling is worth: raise the billable share from 80% to 85% and watch the cost per billable hour fall.
What is a typical labor burden rate?
There’s no honest single number. The burden depends on your province’s payroll rules, your trade’s workers’ compensation rate, whether you offer benefits and allowances, and the wage itself, because CPP and EI stop at their maximums. A crew on a lower wage with a benefits plan can carry a higher burden percentage than a well-paid foreman who has hit the CPP and EI ceilings.
As a pattern: the legally required costs alone (CPP, EI, vacation pay, holiday pay and workers’ comp) usually add a meaningful share on top of wages, and benefits, allowances and a high-risk trade’s WCB rate push it further. Work out your own with the calculator rather than borrowing someone else’s percentage.
How to use labour burden in your pricing
Use $40.81 an hour, not $32, when you build the labour line of a quote from estimated hours on site.
If you sell time by the hour, start from the true cost per billable hour, $51.01 in the example.
Burden covers the employee, not the truck, the insurance or the office. A 25% markup on $51.01 is $63.76 an hour; whether that’s enough depends on your overhead.
Run your own numbers through the hourly rate and markup calculators before the rate goes in your price book.
The contractor hourly rate calculator adds your overhead and profit to get an hourly and day rate, and the contractor markup calculator shows the margin a markup really gives you. For the full method, read how to price a contractor job.
Labour burden mistakes
| Mistake | What it costs | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Quoting labour at the wage | Every hour loses the burden | Quote at the loaded rate |
| Ignoring unbillable time | Billable hours carry the whole year’s cost | Use the true cost per billable hour |
| Last year’s CPP and EI | Costs creep up every January | Update the figures each year |
| Using the class WSIB rate forever | Your own rate can move with your claims | Use the rate on your statement |
| Forgetting allowances and small benefits | Boots, phones and tools add up | Put a yearly number in “other” |
| Never checking against real jobs | The estimate never improves | Compare quoted labour to actual hours |
Real labour cost on every job
The calculator is free and stays free. Contruva takes the next step for you: with crew time tracking and job costing, your team clocks in and out on their phones, their hours land on the job at their rate, and you see each job’s margin live instead of finding out at tax time. Whether you run a renovation company or a two-truck service crew, the labour line in your quotes stops being a guess.
It’s all one plan, Contruva Pro, at $249.99 CAD a month. Start a 7-day free trial, no credit card needed. And if you need to add tax to the finished price, the HST calculator covers every province.