Two Job Take-Home Pay Calculator

How two jobs create a withholding gap

Payroll withholding follows a recipe. Every employer works through the same steps from IRS Publication 15-T: take the wages on this paycheck, multiply by the number of pay periods in a year, subtract a fixed deduction adjustment ($8,600 for most filers, $12,900 for married filing jointly, and $0 when the Step 2(c) box is checked), then look the result up in the annual percentage-method table.

The table is just your bracket schedule shifted down by the standard deduction. For a single filer the table starts withholding at $7,500 of adjusted wages, and $7,500 plus the $8,600 adjustment is $16,100, the 2026 single standard deduction exactly. One job, steady pay, blank W-4: the withholding lands on the liability almost to the dollar. That is the design working.

The design breaks the moment there is a second employer. Employer B has no idea Employer A exists, so it runs the same procedure on its own wages, hands you the standard deduction a second time, and starts you back at the bottom of the bracket ladder. Your return does neither. It adds both W-2s together, subtracts one standard deduction, and applies one ladder.

Run the default figures on this page: $28 an hour for 40 hours plus $18 an hour for 15 hours is $58,240 and $14,040, or $72,280 combined. Job 1 withholds $4,808.80. Job 2 withholds nothing at all, because $14,040 on its own sits under the standard deduction. Total withheld: $4,808.80. Real liability on $72,280 for a single filer: $7,071.60. The difference, $2,262.80, is the bill waiting in April.

What your second job is actually worth after tax

Job 2's pay stub in that example shows $1,635.66 coming out across the year, or 11.65% of its gross. That number is honest about the paycheck and misleading about the job.

The second job's income stacks on top of the first, so it fills the brackets the first job did not use. In the example, $14,040 of extra wages costs $2,262.80 in additional federal income tax, $1,074.06 in Social Security and Medicare, and $561.60 in state tax. Total: $3,898.46, or 27.77% of what Job 2 pays. Job 2 is really worth $10,141.54 a year, not $14,040.

That gap has three parts. Federal tax applies at your combined marginal bracket, not the zero federal income tax a standalone $14,040 job would pay on its own. FICA takes a flat 7.65% off the first dollar, with no second standard deduction to shelter it. State tax applies to every dollar at your effective rate. If you are weighing whether a second job is worth the hours, the 27.77% figure is the one to weigh against your commute and your childcare costs.

Overtime does not combine across employers

This one trips up more hourly workers than anything else on the page. Under FLSA section 207(a)(1), the 40-hour overtime threshold is measured per employer, per workweek. Hours worked for two unrelated employers never combine toward it.

Twenty-five hours at one job plus twenty-five at another is 50 hours of work and zero hours of overtime. Both employers owe straight time, and both are correct. Push one job to 45 hours and only that job owes five hours of premium pay. Push both to 45 and you have ten overtime hours, five at each employer, each calculated on that employer's own rate.

The exception is joint employment under 29 CFR Part 791. If the two jobs are the same company, related entities, or arrangements where one employer controls the other's staffing, the hours do combine and a weighted-average regular rate applies. That is outside what this calculator models. There is more on the rule in do two jobs combine for overtime.

Fixing the gap: Step 2(c) versus Step 4(c)

There are two fixes, and they do not work the same way. Step 2(c) is a checkbox. Tick it on both W-4s and each employer switches to a table built on half the standard deduction and half the bracket widths, which is roughly right when the two jobs pay similar amounts. Form W-4 says so directly: the checkbox is accurate when the lower-paying job pays more than half of the higher-paying one.

In the default example, Job 2 is 24% of Job 1, well under half, so the checkbox overshoots. Withholding jumps from $4,808.80 to $8,996.80 against a $7,071.60 liability, turning a $2,262.80 bill into a $1,925.20 refund. The form is not broken. A checkbox is just a blunt instrument. Toggle the setting above to watch it happen.

Step 4(c) is a flat dollar amount withheld from every paycheck, and it gets you closest to zero because you pick the number yourself. Here it is $2,262.80 divided by 52 weeks, or $43.52 a week. Leave 2(c) unchecked, put $43.52 on Step 4(c) of the higher-paying job's W-4, and you land near break-even instead of lending the IRS $1,925 for a year.

Whichever route you take, the form itself is worth reading once. How to fill out a W-4 with two jobs covers the order of operations, and how to file taxes with multiple jobs picks up at the return.