Employer pension defaults to 3% — the legal minimum under auto-enrolment. Increase it if you're planning to offer more.
The Employment Allowance is applied against your whole payroll's employer NI bill for the year, not per employee — it's shown here fully applied to this one hire for simplicity, but if you already have other staff, some or all of that £10,500 may already be used up elsewhere. It's also not available to companies with a single director and no other employees. This estimate doesn't include statutory sick pay, holiday pay accrual, recruitment costs, equipment, or any benefits in kind — always check current rates at GOV.UK before finalising a hiring budget.
Most take-home-pay calculators only show what an employee actually receives — they don't show what hiring that person costs the employer. This calculator fills that specific gap: it adds Employer National Insurance and the minimum employer pension contribution on top of the gross salary you're offering, so you see the true annual cost of a hire before you commit to it, rather than being surprised by it on your first payroll run.
It also applies the Employment Allowance, which most small employers can claim to offset some or all of their Employer NI bill — a detail that materially changes the real cost of a first or second hire but is easy to overlook.
Auto-enrolment applies based on age and qualifying earnings, not full-time vs part-time status. If a part-time employee earns above the qualifying earnings threshold, the same minimum employer contribution applies.
It's an annual allowance that reduces your employer National Insurance bill, worth up to £10,500 across your whole payroll. Most small employers with more than one person on payroll qualify, but single-director companies with no other employees typically don't.
No — this calculator covers salary, Employer NI, and pension contributions only. Holiday pay accrual, statutory sick pay, recruitment costs, and any equipment or benefits aren't included, so treat this as a floor on the true cost, not the complete picture.