Home Care Hourly Rate Calculator

Start with the hourly wage, add overtime and paid time off, then add employer payroll taxes, workers' compensation, other per-hour costs such as training and mileage, and overhead. The total is your cost per billable hour. This calculator does each step and shows the cost stack.

Divide your cost per hour by one minus your target margin. For a cost of $28.52 and a 10% margin, the bill rate is $28.52 divided by 0.90, or $31.69. Adding 10% to the cost instead would give $31.37 and a real margin of only 9.1%.

Margin is profit as a share of the bill rate. Markup is profit as a share of cost. A 10% margin needs about an 11.1% markup. Mixing the two is a common reason agencies price too low.

Employer FICA is 7.65% of wages: 6.2% Social Security and 1.45% Medicare (IRS Publication 15). Federal unemployment tax is 0.6% net on the first $7,000 per employee, and your state charges its own unemployment tax on its own wage base. Your state may add other payroll taxes.

FUTA applies to only the first $7,000 paid to each employee in a year. That is a fixed dollar amount per caregiver, so the cost per hour depends on how many hours the caregiver works. The same is true of state unemployment tax. Fewer hours per caregiver means a higher cost per hour.

$14,250 per employee, according to the IDES 2026 Historical Rate Chart. Your own contribution rate is on the rate notice IDES sends you, so find it there and enter it. Rates differ by employer.

Your state unemployment rate is on the rate notice from your state workforce agency. In Illinois, that agency is IDES. Your workers' compensation rate per $100 of payroll is on your policy or your carrier's quote and depends on your class code and claims history.

You enter the share of worked hours paid at 1.5 times the base wage, and the calculator adds a half-time premium on that share. It does not decide whether overtime is required for your caregivers. That depends on the federal and state rules that apply to you.

As a percentage of billable hours, paid at the base wage but not billed. If caregivers earn 3% paid time off, the calculator adds 3% of the base wage to the cost of every billable hour.

Yes, as a comparison. Medicaid and state program rates are set by the payer, not by you. Enter the rate you are paid in the optional current bill rate field to see your margin at that rate, or negative margin, and decide where to focus.

Divide your annual office and administrative costs by your annual direct costs (wages, payroll taxes, workers' compensation and other per-hour costs). If you are unsure, your accountant can pull both numbers from your books.