What unemployment insurance costs an employer, state by state
Unemployment benefits are paid out of a tax employers pay and employees never see on a payslip. Its size depends on two numbers that both vary by state: how much of each salary is taxable, and what rate applies. Combine them and the ceiling runs from $378 per employee a year in Florida to $4,506 in North Dakota.
What drives the gap
- The wage base does as much work as the rate. Federal law taxes only the first $7,000 of wages, and 5 states stay at that floor. Washington taxes the first $78,200, about 11.2 times more, so identical rates produce very different bills. The median state taxes the first $14,250.
- The ceiling is not the typical bill. Every figure charted here is the maximum a state's schedule allows. Most employers sit well below it, because rates are experience-rated: an employer that rarely lays people off drifts toward the bottom of the range, and one with frequent claims toward the top.
- Generous benefits and higher employer tax travel together. States fund their own trust funds, so the states paying the largest weekly benefits tend to be the ones collecting more from employers. The two sides of the same system are worth reading alongside each other.
- This is a per-employee cost, so it scales with headcount. A gap of a few hundred dollars per employee is a rounding error for a small team and a material line item across a few hundred staff, which is why it shows up in siting decisions.
Maximum annual cost per employee
Taxable wage base multiplied by the top of the state's rate schedule: the most one employee can cost in state unemployment tax in a year. Covers the 44 states that publish a full rate range. The 7 that do not are excluded rather than shown as zero, and are named below the chart.
View as a table
| Row | Max cost per employee | Wage base and rate range |
|---|---|---|
| North Dakota | $4,506 | wage base $46,600, rate 0.07% to 9.67% |
| Washington | $4,223 | wage base $78,200, rate 0% to 5.4% |
| Minnesota | $4,092 | wage base $44,000, rate 0.4% to 9.3% |
| Utah | $3,650 | wage base $50,700, rate 0.2% to 7.2% |
| Hawaii | $3,612 | wage base $64,500, rate 0% to 5.6% |
| Idaho | $3,148 | wage base $58,300, rate 0.208% to 5.4% |
| Oregon | $3,062 | wage base $56,700, rate 0.9% to 5.4% |
| Montana | $2,895 | wage base $47,300, rate 0% to 6.12% |
| Connecticut | $2,700 | wage base $27,000, rate 0.1% to 10% |
| New Jersey | $2,598 | wage base $44,800, rate 0.5% to 5.8% |
| Nevada | $2,360 | wage base $43,700, rate 0.25% to 5.4% |
| Colorado | $2,246 | wage base $30,600, rate 0.56% to 7.34% |
| Massachusetts | $2,156 | wage base $15,000, rate 0.94% to 14.37% |
| North Carolina | $1,970 | wage base $34,200, rate 0.06% to 5.76% |
| New Mexico | $1,879 | wage base $34,800, rate 0.33% to 5.4% |
| New York | $1,659 | wage base $17,600, rate 1.625% to 9.425% |
| Wisconsin | $1,498 | wage base $14,000, rate 0% to 10.7% |
| Oklahoma | $1,450 | wage base $25,000, rate 0.2% to 5.8% |
| South Dakota | $1,278 | wage base $15,000, rate 0% to 8.52% |
| Iowa | $1,102 | wage base $20,400, rate 0% to 5.4% |
| Kentucky | $1,080 | wage base $12,000, rate 0.3% to 9% |
| Kansas | $1,049 | wage base $15,100, rate 0% to 6.95% |
| Michigan | $927 | wage base $9,000, rate 0.06% to 10.3% |
| Illinois | $926 | wage base $14,250, rate 0.2% to 6.5% |
| Ohio | $909 | wage base $9,000, rate 0.4% to 10.1% |
| Pennsylvania | $895 | wage base $10,000, rate 0.75% to 8.95% |
| Delaware | $783 | wage base $14,500, rate 0.4% to 5.4% |
| Georgia | $770 | wage base $9,500, rate 0.04% to 8.1% |
| Mississippi | $756 | wage base $14,000, rate 0% to 5.4% |
| South Carolina | $756 | wage base $14,000, rate 0% to 5.4% |
| Maine | $755 | wage base $12,000, rate 0% to 6.29% |
| West Virginia | $713 | wage base $9,500, rate 1.5% to 7.5% |
| Indiana | $703 | wage base $9,500, rate 0.5% to 7.4% |
| District of Columbia | $666 | wage base $9,000, rate 1.9% to 7.4% |
| Maryland | $638 | wage base $8,500, rate 0.3% to 7.5% |
| Texas | $569 | wage base $9,000, rate 0.32% to 6.32% |
| Missouri | $540 | wage base $9,000, rate 0% to 6% |
| Virginia | $496 | wage base $8,000, rate 0.1% to 6.2% |
| Nebraska | $486 | wage base $9,000, rate 0% to 5.4% |
| California | $434 | wage base $7,000, rate 1.5% to 6.2% |
| Alabama | $432 | wage base $8,000, rate 0.2% to 5.4% |
| Arkansas | $420 | wage base $7,000, rate 0.1% to 6% |
| Louisiana | $420 | wage base $7,000, rate 0.09% to 6% |
| Florida | $378 | wage base $7,000, rate 0.1% to 5.4% |
Not charted (7): Alaska, Arizona, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Wyoming. These states do not publish a full rate range in this dataset, so a cost cannot be computed for them. Showing them as zero would present missing data as a real figure, so they are left out and named instead. Their taxable wage bases are still included in the wage-base figures above.
Method and limits
maximum annual cost per employee = taxable wage base x highest scheduled rate
- Ceilings, not averages. The figure is the top of the published schedule. It is a comparable measure across states, not a prediction of any employer's bill.
- Surcharges are excluded. Several states add solvency, job-training or administrative surcharges on top of the base schedule, so a real bill can exceed the ceiling shown here.
- New employers are separate. A new business is assigned a standard starting rate rather than an experience-rated one, and that rate is not what is charted.
- Wage bases move. Many states index the taxable wage base to average wages, so figures verified on 2026-07-15 change with the next statutory adjustment.
- 7 states are excluded from the cost chart for missing rate data, and named above rather than silently dropped.
Sources and reuse
- Wage bases and rate schedules: each state's own employment security or revenue authority; the authority for every charted state is in the table above. Verified 2026-07-15.
- The benefits side of the same system: unemployment benefits by state.
- Per-state calculators: our US calculators.
Our compilation and analysis may be quoted freely with credit to CalculatorHub and a link to this page. Reviewed by the CalculatorHub team, edited by James Graham, 9 August 2026. See our methodology. General information, not tax advice.
Frequently asked questions
What is SUTA and who pays it?
State Unemployment Tax Act contributions are paid by employers, not deducted from wages, and they fund the state trust fund that pays unemployment benefits. Each state sets its own taxable wage base and its own rate schedule, and most states assign an individual employer a rate based on its own layoff history, which is called experience rating.
Which state costs employers the most?
Of the 44 states publishing a full rate range, North Dakota has the highest possible cost per employee at $4,506 a year, and Florida the lowest at $378, roughly 11.9 times less. That is the maximum a poor experience rating can reach, not what a typical employer pays.
Why do wage bases vary so much?
Federal law only sets a floor: the first $7,000 of each employee's wages. 5 states stay at that floor, while Washington taxes the first $78,200, about 11.2 times more. A higher wage base means the tax keeps applying further up each salary, so two states with identical rates can still produce very different bills.
Will I pay the maximum rate?
Usually not. New employers are assigned a standard starting rate, and after a qualifying period the rate is set by the employer's own record of claims. Employers who rarely lay staff off tend toward the bottom of the range; those with frequent claims move toward the top. The maximum is a ceiling, not a typical bill.
Is SUTA the same as FUTA?
No. FUTA is the separate federal unemployment tax, charged on the first $7,000 of wages, and employers who pay their state tax on time generally receive a substantial credit against it. SUTA is the state-level tax shown on this page, and it is by far the larger of the two in most states.