Massachusetts · free tool
The wage floor here is $15.00 and the market median is $20.50. Neither is what the hour costs you.
Your numbers
Only you can supply these
Your policy
Fully loaded cost per hour
$25.38
$20.50 wage × 1.2380 = $25.38. Burden is 23.8% of wages.
One full-time equivalent at 2,080 hours: $52,790.40 a year, before supervision, supplies, equipment, overhead or profit.
Where every dollar goes
| Component | Rate | $ / hour | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base wage | — | $20.50 | What you typed. |
| FICA — Social Security and MedicareFederal law | 7.65% | $1.57 | 6.2% Social Security plus 1.45% Medicare, employer share. Fixed in federal law. |
| FUTA — federal unemploymentFederal law | 0.60% | $0.12 | 6.0% on the first $7,000 less the 5.4% state credit, so 0.6% effective for an employer in good standing. |
| SUTA — state unemploymentYours | 3.00% | $0.62 | Set per state and experience-rated per employer. Your rate is on your state unemployment notice; nobody can look it up for you. Typical range 0.6–6.2%. New employers start near the top of their state's range and earn their way down. |
| Workers' compensationYours | 3.50% | $0.72 | NCCI class 9014 for janitorial. Swings from roughly 2% to over 15% of payroll with state, carrier and your own experience modification rate. Your broker has the number. Typical range 2.0–15.0%. The single widest-swinging line in the stack. A poor EMR can double it. |
| General liabilityYours | 1.50% | $0.31 | Quoted per company against payroll and revenue. From your certificate of insurance. Typical range 0.8–3.0%. Higher where the work is at height or around equipment. |
| Paid time offYour policy | 3.85% | $0.79 | Your policy. 10 days on 2,080 hours is 3.85%. |
| HolidaysYour policy | 2.70% | $0.55 | Your policy. 7 days on 2,080 hours is 2.7%. |
| Training and orientationYour policy | 1.00% | $0.21 | Paid onboarding and ongoing training, as a share of payroll. |
| Loaded hourly cost | 1.2380× | $25.38 | Wage plus every line above. |
Massachusetts: what the market pays
Legal floor
$15.00
Massachusetts minimum wage.
Market median
$20.50
BLS OEWS, janitors and cleaners, 2024-05.
Union rate on file
$21.00
Highest of SEIU 32BJ. Approximate — confirm with the local.
Wage medians are BLS OEWS. Minimum wages are published state and federal minimum wage schedules. Union rates are public summaries of SEIU agreements, approximated and are approximate — a seeded rate looks exactly like a negotiated one, so treat it as the starting point for a call to the local, never as the rate. Nothing on this page is legal or tax advice. Archer uses this same calculation to price a bid.
The binding floor is $15.00 — the state minimum, which is above the federal $7.25. The BLS median for janitors and cleaners here is $20.50, which is where open-market hiring actually happens.
An SEIU local covers territory here, with a base rate of about $21.00 on file — SEIU 32BJ. That figure is approximate and seeded from public summaries; on a union bid it is the starting point for a call to the local, not the rate. A collective agreement will also carry health and welfare stated per hour worked, which is the field at the bottom of the form.
SUTA is experience-rated per employer within a state range — yours is on your unemployment notice. Workers’ compensation for janitorial is NCCI class 9014 and swings by more than a factor of seven across states, carriers and experience modification rates. General liability is quoted per company. Those three are the inputs on the left, with a typical range against each; everything else on this page either comes from federal law or is your own policy.
Other states
Archer reads the solicitation, prices the hours against production rates, resolves the wage for the building's own address, and writes the proposal.