About PayMath
A small set of career calculators and job guides, built to be genuinely useful without collecting anything from you.
What this site is
PayMath exists to answer practical questions about pay and work: what does this hourly rate come to over a year, is that job offer actually better, what does a career break cost. The calculators run entirely in your browser. There is no account, no signup, and no paywall.
What we do not do
- We do not ask you to create an account.
- We do not upload or store the figures you enter.
- We do not run advertising or third-party analytics scripts.
- We do not sell data, because we do not collect any.
- We do not give financial, tax, investment, or legal advice.
Where the data comes from
Pay and outlook figures come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook. BLS material is in the public domain; we cite it as the source and do not use the BLS emblem. Figures are the May 2025 median annual wage unless stated otherwise.
Occupational descriptions, skills lists, and resume guidance on this site are original writing produced for this site. They are not reproduced from any third-party database.
Where we could not verify something, we say so
Some job outlook figures could not be confirmed at source. Those are shown as unavailable rather than filled in with an estimate. We would rather publish a blank than a number we cannot stand behind.
How the calculators are tested
Every formula is checked against hand-worked examples before it ships, and the expected values are written into the test files so the reasoning is visible.
Including one bug we shipped past our own tests. Our first version of the career break calculator compounded a salary gap incorrectly — it applied one year of growth repeatedly instead of compounding year on year, understating the total by about 11%. Our initial tests passed it because they only checked that the number was positive. It was caught by a second, independent test that recomputed the answer by a different route. The fix is in, the exact expected value is now pinned in the test suite, and the lesson is why we test formulas two different ways. We mention it because a site that claims to be careful should show its work when it was not careful enough.
Corrections
If you find an error, we want to know. Figures change and sources update. Corrections are welcome and will be made visibly rather than quietly.