US Employer Cost Dataset 2026-2027 (Hiring Cost Atlas)

What does an employee really cost a US employer, on top of pay? This dataset collects, for all 50 states, the District of Columbia, 12 cities with their own rules and the federal level, every official input needed to answer that: Federal payroll taxes: Social Security (rate and wage base, 2026 and 2027), Medicare, FUTA and credit-reduction states. State unemployment insurance (SUTA): new-employer rate and taxable wage base. State employer-paid programs: paid family and medical leave, temporary disability (employer shares and size thresholds). Workers' compensation: state premium index per $100 of payroll. Employer health coverage: average premiums and employee contributions by state (single and family). Paid sick leave mandates: accrual rate and yearly caps by employer size. Minimum wage: state and city rates for 2026 and the 2027 rates already announced. City rules: local payroll taxes and charges (e.g. NYC MCTMT, Denver OPT, Jersey City payroll tax, Portland TriMet). 642 values, 64 jurisdictions. Every value has its official source URL, the publishing agency, the effective date and the date it was last verified. Interactive version, calculator and methodology: Hiring Cost Atlas by LeadChange Group · Employee cost calculator: https://leadchangegroup.com/tools/employee-cost-calculator/ Files File Content us-employer-cost-2026-2027.csv One row per value (long format) us-employer-cost-2026-2027.json Same data with column descriptions, license and citation datapackage.json Frictionless Data descriptor Columns Column Description jurisdiction State (two-letter code), city or US jurisdiction_type federal, state or city year Calendar year the value applies to measure What the value is (e.g. suta_new_employer_rate, social_security_wage_base) value The number unit percent, usd, usd_per_100_payroll, usd_per_hour, usd_per_month, hours, employees effective Date the value applies from (or the survey or study edition) carried_from_2026 1 when the 2027 value is not published yet and the 2026 value is shown source_url Official page the value comes from publisher Agency that publishes it verified_at Day the value was last checked against its source Updates Values are re-checked against their official sources on a schedule and the live version updates when an agency changes a figure (2027 rates are added as states announce them). The most current data is always at https://leadchangegroup.com/research/hiring-cost-atlas/data.csv and through the free read-only API at https://leadchangegroup.com/api/hiring-cost-atlas/v1/states/. License and citation CC BY 4.0: free to use, share and adapt, including commercially, with attribution. Please cite as: LeadChange Research Team, "Hiring Cost Atlas", LeadChange Group, 2026, https://leadchangegroup.com/research/hiring-cost-atlas/ Estimates for planning only; not tax or legal advice. Found an error? Tell us through the correction link on the atlas page. Also on GitHub: https://github.com/onyx-digital-holdings/us-employer-cost-dataset