Salary Discount Calculator
A pay cut is usually announced as one clean number: 10 percent, 15 percent, a new salary. What it actually costs you is messier, because that percentage lands on your gross pay, then ripples into every paycheck, your monthly budget, and the hourly rate behind the annual figure. This calculator keeps all three views in one place. It works out the new gross salary after a percentage cut, finds the cut percentage from any old and new salary, and converts between hourly and annual pay, so a cut offer, a new job offer, and an hourly rate can all be compared on the same footing.
One boundary matters before you type anything in. Everything here is gross pay: salary before tax, before pension or retirement deductions, and before any other withholding. A gross cut of 15 percent does not mean your bank balance falls by exactly 15 percent, because lower pay usually means lower tax and lower percentage-based deductions too. The gross figure is still the right starting point, because it is the figure your employer actually announces and the figure every later calculation starts from. If you want the after-tax picture, that is a different tool with a different job, and this page says so wherever the two could be confused.
Quick Answer
A 15 percent cut to an $80,000 gross salary leaves $68,000, a loss of $12,000 a year, which is $1,000 a month, $461.54 every two weeks, and $230.77 a week. The same tool in reverse shows that $75,000 falling to $60,000 is a 20 percent cut, and that $35 an hour at full time is $72,800 a year. All three figures are gross pay, before tax and deductions.
- Quick Answer
- What this calculator actually measures: gross pay, not take-home pay
- Three calculations inside one tool
- The formulas, step by step
- Worked examples, verified against the tool
- Reading a cut offer like a negotiator
- Gross cut versus take-home cut: where the money actually goes
- What competing calculators miss
- Frequently asked questions
- Add This Calculator to Your Website
- References
What this calculator actually measures: gross pay, not take-home pay
The short answer is that this tool measures the employer's number. When a company announces a pay cut, it announces it on gross salary, and this calculator follows that announcement exactly: current gross salary, cut percentage, new gross salary, and the gross amount lost per year, month, two weeks, and week. Nothing here estimates tax, because tax depends on filing status, location, and other income that this tool never asks about.
That distinction is the whole reason this page exists alongside the site's net-pay tools. The reduced salary calculator takes the opposite angle: it compares gross and net cards side by side and works out what a cut costs in take-home pay. Use this page when the question is "what did my employer just do to my salary, and what is the new headline figure?" Use the reduced salary tool when the question is "what will actually land in my bank account?" Confusing the two is the most common mistake in pay-cut maths, and it runs in one direction: people budget against the gross loss and overstate the hit, because the tax and percentage-based deductions on the lost pay disappear with it.
The hourly conversion is part of the same gross framing. An hourly rate of $35 converts to $72,800 a year only on a full-time pattern of 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. If you work part time, seasonal hours, or unpaid time off, the annual figure will be lower, and the honest move is to multiply your real scheduled hours instead of trusting 2,080. The tool states its assumption on the tab itself so nobody has to guess.
Three calculations inside one tool
The short answer is that the three tabs answer three different questions, and picking the wrong tab is the only real way to get a wrong answer out of correct maths. The table below states each tab's question plainly.
| Tab | Question it answers | What you enter |
|---|---|---|
| Cut by percentage | What will I earn after a cut of this size? | Current salary and cut percentage |
| Old vs new salary | How big, in percent, is the change between two salaries? | Old salary and new salary |
| Hourly to annual | What is this hourly rate worth a year, or this salary worth an hour? | Either an hourly rate or an annual salary |
The second tab deserves a note because it does double duty. If the new salary is lower, it reports a pay cut; if it is higher, it reports a pay raise, using the same formula. That is deliberate: the percentage change between two salaries is one calculation, and splitting it into two tools would only hide the symmetry. A move from $60,000 to $75,000 is a 25 percent raise, while the reverse move, $75,000 to $60,000, is a 20 percent cut, and both directions are correct at once because each percentage is measured against its own starting salary. If you want the raise direction explored on its own, the salary raise calculator covers it in depth.
The formulas, step by step
The short answer is that all three tabs rest on three short formulas, and every result on this page can be checked by hand in under a minute. There is no hidden adjustment, no tax estimate, and no rounding trick.
New salary after a percentage cut. Lost pay equals current salary multiplied by the cut percentage divided by 100. New salary equals current salary minus lost pay. For the worked example: $80,000 multiplied by 15 divided by 100 gives $12,000 lost, and $80,000 minus $12,000 gives $68,000. The monthly loss divides the annual loss by 12, the two-weekly loss by 26, and the weekly loss by 52, which is why the three smaller figures always add back up to the annual loss over a full year.
Cut percentage from two salaries. Subtract the new salary from the old salary, divide by the old salary, and multiply by 100. For $75,000 to $60,000: $15,000 divided by $75,000 is 0.20, which is 20 percent. The old salary is always the base, never the new one. That single choice is what makes the raise and cut percentages asymmetric, and it matches how percentage change is defined everywhere else: change relative to where you started.
Hourly and annual conversion. Annual salary equals hourly rate multiplied by 2,080, and hourly rate equals annual salary divided by 2,080. The 2,080 comes from 40 hours a week multiplied by 52 weeks, and the 40-hour week is the standard full-time threshold in United States federal overtime law, as set out in the Fair Labor Standards Act material from the Department of Labor. For a part-time pattern, replace 2,080 with your own yearly hours: hourly rate multiplied by scheduled hours per week multiplied by working weeks per year. The wage conversion calculator handles other pay periods, such as weekly, monthly, and daily rates, if the annual figure is not the comparison you need.
Worked examples, verified against the tool
The short answer is that the three examples below are the tool's own pre-filled values, run through the live formulas, so the numbers in this section and the numbers the calculator produces are the same numbers.
Example 1, a percentage cut. Current salary $80,000, cut 15 percent. Lost pay is $12,000 a year. New salary is $68,000. Monthly loss is $1,000.00, two-weekly loss is $461.54, weekly loss is $230.77. The monthly figure is the one to carry into a budget, because rent, bills, and subscriptions are monthly, while the weekly figure is the one that makes a small-sounding percentage feel concrete.
Example 2, old against new. Old salary $75,000, new salary $60,000. The difference is $15,000, and $15,000 divided by $75,000 is a 20.00 percent pay cut. Run the same tab backwards, $60,000 to $75,000, and it reports a 25.00 percent raise on the same $15,000 difference. Neither figure is a mistake; each is measured against a different starting salary.
Example 3, hourly conversion. An hourly rate of $35 multiplied by 2,080 gives $72,800 a year. An annual salary of $72,800 divided by 2,080 gives $35.00 an hour. An hourly rate of $25 gives $52,000 a year. These conversions are gross-to-gross, so they inherit the same boundary as the cut tabs: they say nothing about tax.
Reading a cut offer like a negotiator
The short answer is that the percentage is the least informative part of a cut offer on its own; the monthly loss, the duration, and what else changes are what decide whether to accept it. The table below puts the same $80,000 salary through five cut sizes so the pattern is visible at a glance.
| Cut | New salary | Lost per year | Lost per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5% | $76,000 | $4,000 | $333.33 |
| 10% | $72,000 | $8,000 | $666.67 |
| 15% | $68,000 | $12,000 | $1,000.00 |
| 20% | $64,000 | $16,000 | $1,333.33 |
| 25% | $60,000 | $20,000 | $1,666.67 |
Four questions turn a percentage into a decision. First, is the cut temporary, with a written restoration date, or permanent? A 15 percent cut for three months costs $3,000; the same cut with no end date costs $12,000 a year, every year, plus every future raise calculated from a lower base. Second, do hours fall with pay? A salary cut with unchanged hours is a pure rate cut, while a cut achieved by fewer hours leaves the hourly rate intact and frees time, which is a genuinely different deal. Third, what happens to percentage-based benefits? Retirement contributions set as a percentage of pay shrink automatically with the salary, and any employer match tied to pay shrinks with them, so the real cost of a cut is slightly larger than the salary line alone. Fourth, does the offer change anything else: bonus eligibility, overtime status, or job duties? Get the answers in writing before accepting, because a verbal restoration promise is worth very little when budgets tighten again.
Takeaway: Judge a cut by its monthly gross loss and its duration, not by whether the percentage sounds small. A 10 percent cut on $80,000 is $666.67 a month, and a cut with no restoration date compounds through every future raise.
Gross cut versus take-home cut: where the money actually goes
The short answer is that the take-home loss from a pay cut is normally smaller than the gross loss, because the tax and deductions on the lost pay vanish along with it. This page reports the gross loss because that is the announced figure, but a household budget runs on take-home pay, so both numbers deserve a place in the decision.
The mechanics are straightforward. Federal income tax withholding, state withholding where it applies, and percentage-based retirement contributions are all calculated on pay actually earned. Cut the pay and each of those lines falls, which cushions the blow to net pay. Fixed deductions, such as a flat health insurance premium, do not fall, so they take a larger share of a smaller paycheck. The bonus take-home pay calculator shows the same gross-to-net logic from the other side, working out what part of a payment actually reaches the employee after withholding. None of this is a reason to accept a cut lightly: the cushion only softens the loss, it never erases it, and a lower salary still means lower future raises, lower retirement contributions, and lower Social Security wage credits over time.
One related trap is worth naming. Some cut announcements quote a percentage of take-home pay, or a round monthly figure, instead of a percentage of gross salary. Always convert back to gross first with this tool's second tab, because offers quoted different ways cannot be compared until they share a base. A $500-a-month take-home reduction and a 10 percent gross cut may be the same offer or two very different ones, and only the gross figures tell you which.
What competing calculators miss
The short answer is that most competing pay-cut tools do one of the three jobs on this page and quietly ignore the other two. Generic percentage-decrease calculators, such as the ones from Calculator.io and CalculatorLib, compute the percentage between two numbers correctly, but they know nothing about salaries: no monthly, two-weekly, or weekly loss breakdown, no hourly conversion, and no guidance on what a cut means for benefits. The dedicated salary cut tool from YesCalculator gets the core formula right, with a worked $50,000 at 10 percent example giving $45,000, but it stops at the new salary and offers no reverse percentage tab and no hourly view. Timesheets.com's pay raise and pay cut tool is closer, handling both salaried and hourly staff with an adjustable work week, but it is a lead-in for a time-tracking product rather than a standalone salary tool, and it does not break the loss down by pay period.
The net-pay tools go the other way: the iCalculator pay cut calculators model after-tax effects for a specific jurisdiction and tax year, which is genuinely useful, but a reader outside that jurisdiction, or comparing two gross offers, gets nothing from them. Our winning moves are therefore simple and checkable. First, all three gross calculations live in one tool, so a cut percentage, two salaries, and an hourly rate can be checked against each other without opening three pages. Second, the loss is broken down by pay period, because a yearly figure is abstract and a monthly figure is a budget line. Third, the gross boundary is stated on the page, not buried, with the net-pay tools named as the next step instead of pretending this tool covers them. A tool that is honest about what it does not do is more useful than a tool that silently answers a different question.
Frequently asked questions
Multiply your current gross salary by the cut percentage divided by 100 to get the amount lost, then subtract that amount from the current salary. For $80,000 at 15 percent, the loss is $12,000 and the new salary is $68,000.
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References
- U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division. Fair Labor Standards Act. Accessed October 25, 2026.
- U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division. Overtime Pay. Accessed October 25, 2026.
- U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division. Fair Labor Standards Act Questions and Answers. Accessed October 25, 2026.
- U.S. Department of Labor. Minimum Wage. Accessed October 25, 2026.
- Internal Revenue Service. Publication 15, Employer's Tax Guide. Accessed October 25, 2026.
- Internal Revenue Service. Publication 15-B, Employer's Tax Guide to Fringe Benefits. Accessed October 25, 2026.
- Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics: 401(k) and Profit-Sharing Plan Contribution Limits. Accessed October 25, 2026.
- California Department of Industrial Relations. Paydays, Pay Periods and Final Wages. Accessed October 25, 2026.
- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED. Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees, Total Private. Accessed October 25, 2026.
- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED. Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items. Accessed October 25, 2026.