Farm labor cost calculator
What an employee hour actually costs once payroll taxes, workers compensation and non-productive time are counted — and what that makes the labor in a unit you sell.
A planning estimate, not tax or payroll advice. Rates vary by state and change — confirm your own numbers with your accountant.
1. Wage and payroll costs
Loaded hourly cost
2. Productive hours
Paid hours that do not produce anything. Paid leave belongs here and only here — adding it again as a percentage double counts it.
True hourly cost
3. Labor cost per unit
Hours per batch of production — per 100 bed-feet, per tray, per block, whatever your crop is measured in — then the saleable units that batch produces.
| Task | Hours per batch | Share of labor | Cost per batch | Remove |
|---|
Per unit sold
Overtime, if it applies to you
How it works
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The wage is not the cost
Loaded cost = wages + employer taxes + workers comp + benefits + hiring costs
The employer half of FICA alone is 7.65% with no judgment call involved. Add unemployment insurance, workers compensation — which for agricultural classifications can exceed the entire tax burden — and the cost of finding and training someone, and a wage becomes a materially larger number.
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Unemployment taxes are capped, not percentages
Federal unemployment applies to the first several thousand dollars each worker earns, and state unemployment has its own ceiling. Treating either as a flat percentage of payroll overstates it for anyone who earns past the cap, which at a normal seasonal wage is almost everybody. It is a small dollar error that destroys trust the moment a grower reconciles against a real filing.
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Paid hours are not productive hours
Cost per productive hour = cost per paid hour ÷ utilization
You pay for rest breaks, travel between blocks, wash-up, weather standdowns, training, meetings and paid leave. None of it puts a crop in a box. Utilization below 80% is unremarkable on a diversified farm with scattered ground, and pricing off paid hours quietly understates cost by a fifth.
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Count paid leave once
Paid time off is already inside the hours you pay for, so it belongs in the productivity denominator. Adding it again as a percentage on top of the wage is double counting — a common error, and one that inflates the answer rather than understating it.
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Price the owner’s hours
On most small farms the owner works more hours than anyone. Leaving those hours out of the arithmetic because no cash changes hands makes per-unit cost look far lower than it is, and can make a genuinely unprofitable crop look worth growing. Price them at what the time could otherwise earn, or at minimum look at the figure both ways.
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Only saleable units carry the cost
Cost per unit = (hours per unit × loaded rate) ÷ (1 − cull rate)
Culls, seconds and unsold surplus consumed labor and earned nothing, so the labor they used has to be recovered across what actually sold. A cull rate in the high single digits moves the answer by a similar amount.
About this tool
This is an educational planning tool. It is not tax, payroll, accounting, insurance or legal advice, and using it creates no professional relationship.
Employment and payroll rules for agriculture differ from other industries, differ between states, and change from year to year. Agricultural overtime thresholds, workers compensation requirements and rates, state unemployment rates and wage bases, small-farm exemptions, and H-2A obligations including the Adverse Effect Wage Rate are all jurisdiction-specific and subject to revision. We do not verify any figure against your situation.
Federal rates in our defaults reflect our understanding as of August 2026 and may be out of date. Defaults for workers compensation, unemployment, benefits and task times are illustrative starting points, not recommendations — replace them with your own figures wherever you can. For state agricultural overtime rules, the National Agricultural Law Center compilation (opens in a new tab) is kept current; we deliberately do not publish per-state thresholds here.
Before making hiring, pricing or payroll decisions, confirm your obligations with a qualified accountant, payroll provider or attorney familiar with agricultural employment in your state, and check current guidance from the IRS, the U.S. Department of Labor, and your state labor and workers compensation agencies. Provided as-is, with no warranty of accuracy or fitness for any purpose.
Labor is one line in the cost of a crop. Add materials and overhead with the craft farm COGS calculator, then set trade pricing with the wholesale price calculator.