Colorado Employee Cost Calculator

An $85,000 hire in Colorado costs the employer about $109,178 a year at the defaults on this page, or $9,098 a month and $52.49 an hour on 2,080 hours. The $24,178 above salary is the burden: employer FICA, federal and state unemployment, workers comp, benefits, paid time off, and overhead. The calculator pre-fills Colorado's SUI estimate; every other field is editable.

Colorado charges state unemployment insurance on the first $23,800 of each employee's wages, at an estimated 1.7% for a new employer. On an $85,000 salary that is $405 for the year, $97 above the $308 median across the 51 jurisdictions on this site. The wage base is met in week 15 of a full-time year, so SUI stops accruing after that and the annual figure is the cap. Experience-rated employers pay more or less than the new-employer rate, so replace it with the rate on your annual notice.

Colorado also levies a state income tax, estimated at about 4.4% effective for a typical earner, which is roughly $3,740 on $85,000. That comes out of the employee's paycheck, not the employer's budget, so it does not appear in the cost above. It does affect the salary a candidate will accept, which is why the same title often pays more in Colorado than in a state with no income tax.

The largest line in the Colorado total is employer FICA at $6,503, which is federal and identical in every state. Benefits at 8.0% add $6,800, and 15 days of PTO cost $4,904 in salary paid for hours not worked. Workers comp at 1.5% adds $1,275; the real rate depends on the class code and on Colorado's rate filings, so replace the default with the rate on your policy.

For a staffing agency placing a W2 employee in Colorado at this salary, $109,178 is the floor a bill rate has to clear: $52.49 an hour before any gross margin. In Colorado, SUI is a larger share of that floor than in most states, so a bill rate built on the national 18% burden assumption will be short. Recover it in the markup.