In plain words
A salary is what the employee sees. Loaded cost is what the business pays.
On this site we load a salary with three lines: base pay, employer payroll taxes (10.7%: Social Security, Medicare, unemployment and workers' comp) and benefits and insurance (23.0%). Both shares are the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics average for private companies with 1 to 49 workers (June 2025). Each line is rounded to the nearest $100. Software and recruiting come on top.
Example
A $57,500 bookkeeper, loaded
Base pay$57,500
Payroll taxes$6,100
Benefits and insurance$13,200
A year$76,800
That is $6,400 a month, or about $37 an hour.