Employer Payroll Taxes Not on Your Stub
Your stub shows only the employee half of payroll tax. Here is the employer FICA match, FUTA, and state unemployment that never prints as a deduction.
Pull up your most recent pay stub and find the Social Security line. It shows 6.2% of your gross pay, subtracted, gone before the money ever reached your account.
Now look for the other 6.2%. Your employer paid it on the same wages, in the same pay period, into the same program. It is not printed anywhere on that stub, and on most stubs it never will be.
That gap is one of the most common reasons a worker emails payroll asking what’s missing. Usually nothing is. A pay stub is a one-sided document on purpose, and once the reason clicks, the rest of the employer’s tax bill stops looking like something being kept from you.
Every federal figure below is for the 2026 tax year. This is general information about how payroll taxes are structured, not tax advice for your situation.
Your stub shows one half of a two-sided tax
A pay stub answers exactly one question: what happened to your gross pay. Earnings at the top, deductions in the middle, net at the bottom. Every line either adds to gross or comes out of it.
Employer payroll taxes do neither. They are an expense the company owes on top of your wage, paid from company funds, and they never touch the paycheck arithmetic. Printing the employer’s 6.2% as a deduction would be flatly wrong: it would shrink your net pay by money that was never yours to lose. The gross to net path covers the side that does come out of your pay.
The law is built the same way. Federal law does not require a pay stub at all. The FLSA requires employers to keep payroll records, including “all additions to or deductions from the employee’s wages,” and the Department of Labor states plainly that “the Act requires no particular form for the records” (WHD Fact Sheet #21). State wage-statement laws fill that gap, and they are written around earnings and deductions. Employer-side tax is neither, so no state requires it on the statement either, though what your state does require varies more than most people expect.
The employer’s half is reported, just not to you. It goes on Form 941 every quarter for FICA and withholding, and Form 940 once a year for federal unemployment (IRS, Understanding employment taxes).
The employer match: Social Security and Medicare, dollar for dollar
For 2026 the split looks like this:
| Tax | Employee | Employer | Cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social Security (OASDI) | 6.2% | 6.2% | First $184,500 of wages |
| Medicare | 1.45% | 1.45% | No cap |
| Additional Medicare | 0.9% above $200,000 | none | No cap |
So 7.65% comes out of your check and 7.65% comes out of the employer’s pocket. IRS Publication 15 for 2026 sets the Social Security wage base at $184,500, and Medicare applies to every dollar of wages with no ceiling (Topic no. 751).
The word “match” breaks down in exactly one place. Your employer must withhold the 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax once your wages with that employer pass $200,000 in a year, regardless of your filing status, and the employer contributes nothing against it. Plenty of payroll explainers imply the full 15.3% is always split down the middle, which stops being true above $200,000.
One worked example carries the rest of this article. A worker at $30 an hour for 2,080 hours earns $62,400 for the year, or $2,400 per biweekly check.
| Line | Per check | Per year | On the stub? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employee Social Security, 6.2% | $148.80 | $3,868.80 | Yes |
| Employee Medicare, 1.45% | $34.80 | $904.80 | Yes |
| Employer Social Security, 6.2% | $148.80 | $3,868.80 | No |
| Employer Medicare, 1.45% | $34.80 | $904.80 | No |
Four identical amounts, two of them visible. Run your own wage through the FICA tax calculator if you want the year-end figures for your own pay rather than this example.
High earners get one twist. Once wages pass $184,500, the employer’s 6.2% stops along with yours and only the two 1.45% Medicare shares keep running, so the employer’s tax as a share of pay falls for the rest of the year.
FUTA and state unemployment: taxes you never pay
Unemployment insurance is funded almost entirely by employers, which is why no unemployment line shows up on a typical stub.
Federal unemployment tax (FUTA) is 6.0% on the first $7,000 of each employee’s wages for the year. Employers who pay their state unemployment tax on time claim a credit of up to 5.4%, which brings the real rate down to 0.6%: a maximum of $42 per employee per year (Instructions for Form 940). It is front-loaded, finished within the first few months for a full-time worker, and reported annually.
That 5.4% credit is not guaranteed. When a state borrows from the federal unemployment account and does not repay, employers in that state lose part of it: 0.3% for the first year, another 0.3% for the second, and an additional 0.3% for each year after (IRS, FUTA credit reduction). For 2025 wages, two jurisdictions were reduced: California at 1.2%, an effective FUTA rate of 1.8% and up to $126 per employee, and the U.S. Virgin Islands at 4.5%. Both are filed on Schedule A (Form 940), with the extra tax due alongside Form 940 by February 2, 2026.
California is on the Department of Labor’s potential list again for 2026, and the Virgin Islands appeared on it before repaying its federal loan balance in early 2026, which could clear it. Nothing is settled either way until the determination after November 10, 2026. Check the DOL credit reduction page each November instead of trusting a figure published in the spring.
State unemployment tax (SUTA) is the bigger of the two and is employer-paid in nearly every state. Rates are experience-rated, so a business with a history of layoffs pays more than one without, and every state sets its own taxable wage base. Each base has to be at least the $7,000 federal figure and most run well above it: New York is $13,000 for 2026, Washington $78,200 (PayrollOrg wage base tables).
Three states are the exception worth knowing about. Alaska, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania require a small employee unemployment contribution, and there it does appear on the stub as a deduction. If you work in one of them and see a state UI line, it is legitimate rather than an error.
Workers’ compensation belongs in the same bucket, with the caveat that it is an insurance premium rather than a payroll tax. The employer pays the premium. It is a real cost of employing you, and it never appears as a deduction either.
The optional employer contributions block, and how to build one
Some stubs do show employer-paid amounts, in a separate block labeled something like “employer contributions” or “employer-paid benefits.” That block is voluntary. No federal rule requires it and none forbids it.
It earns its space in a few situations: total-compensation transparency, benefits enrollment season, and small or household employers where the owner is also the payroll department and wants a paper record of what was paid on the worker’s behalf.
The rules for building one are short and unforgiving:
- Informational only. The block sits outside the deduction column entirely.
- Never added to total deductions. Gross minus deductions has to still equal net, to the cent.
- Never added to gross. Folding an employer match into gross would misstate Box 1 of the W-2 and inflate wages that were never taxable to the employee.
- Current and year-to-date columns, the same as every other section of the stub.
- Labeled clearly, so no reader mistakes it for something taken out of their pay.
Typical contents: the employer’s 401(k) match, its share of health premiums, HSA contributions, and, if you want the full picture on the page, the FICA match itself.
One category does not belong there. Taxable fringe benefits (group-term life above the exclusion, personal use of a company car, and similar items) are imputed income. They sit inside gross wages and get taxed, rather than living in an informational block beside them.
If you build stubs yourself, Payslip44 treats employer contributions as their own line-item type: an amount plus an optional year-to-date figure, printed on the stub, excluded from the deduction math, and saveable as a reusable item template so you are not retyping the match every period.
What an hour of labor really costs
Back to the worker at $30 an hour. Add the employer’s side and the number changes shape.
| Cost | Annual |
|---|---|
| Gross wages | $62,400.00 |
| Employer Social Security | $3,868.80 |
| Employer Medicare | $904.80 |
| FUTA, 0.6% of the first $7,000 | $42.00 |
| SUTA (illustrative: 2.7% on a $9,000 state base) | $243.00 |
| Total employer payroll tax | $5,058.60 |
| Fully loaded wage cost | $67,458.60 |
Treat the SUTA row as illustrative and nothing more. It is the one figure here that is not a federal constant, and your real rate and wage base depend on your state and your experience rating.
That works out to 8.1% on top of gross. The $30 hour actually costs $32.43 before a single benefit is added, and the percentage holds roughly steady for any wage under the Social Security wage base.
Benefits are what move the multiple. BLS data for June 2026 puts private industry total compensation at $46.89 per hour worked: $32.82 in wages and salaries (70.0%) and $14.07 in benefits (30.0%). Legally required benefits, meaning the employer taxes in this article plus workers’ comp, account for $3.40 per hour, or 7.2% of total compensation (Employer Costs for Employee Compensation).
That gives the old “an employee costs 1.25 to 1.4 times salary” rule of thumb a real source, and it puts taxes at roughly the first 8 to 10 points of it. The employer payroll cost calculator runs the whole stack for a specific wage and state rate, which is the number to have in hand before you quote someone a salary.
When the missing lines actually mean something is wrong
Absent employer tax rows are normal. These four things are not.
Your own FICA lines are missing. On a W-2 job, Social Security and Medicare withholding should appear every single period. If they don’t, something is wrong with how you are classified or how you are being paid.
You were handed a 1099 for work that looks like employment. This is the expensive one. A contractor pays the whole 15.3% (12.4% Social Security plus 2.9% Medicare) as self-employment tax on 92.35% of net earnings, with a filing requirement starting at $400 of net self-employment earnings. The employer’s half of that bill becomes yours. Read up on how W-2, 1099, statutory, and owner classifications differ before accepting that arrangement.
Year-to-date totals don’t reconcile. Add your period deductions across the year and compare them against the YTD column. A gap means either a correction happened or a mistake did.
Withholding is taken but never credited. At year end, check Form W-2 Boxes 3 through 6 against your stubs, then check your earnings record at ssa.gov. The quarterly Form 941 is the employer’s filing and never comes to you, so the W-2 and the SSA record are the two verification points you actually hold.
None of this is a reason to distrust a clean stub. The employer’s half of payroll tax is real and close to equal with yours, and it is invisible on the document you are holding by design. It lives in the company ledger and on Forms 940 and 941, priced into your labor.
If you create stubs for employees, contractors, or household help, Payslip44 builds them line by line on-device with decimal-precise math, an employer contributions section that stays out of the deduction totals, and PDF, PNG, CSV, and text exports. Download it and put the employer’s half somewhere a person can actually see it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does my pay stub show what my employer pays in taxes?
Usually no. A stub itemizes earnings and deductions, and employer taxes are neither: they are paid on top of your wage, not out of it. Some employers add an optional, clearly labeled employer contributions block, but nothing in federal law requires it.
What is the employer share of Social Security and Medicare?
For 2026 it is 6.2% Social Security on wages up to $184,500 plus 1.45% Medicare with no cap, so 7.65% total, matching the employee side dollar for dollar. The 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax on wages above $200,000 is the exception: the employer withholds it but does not match it.
Should a pay stub list employer contributions?
It is optional, and often a good idea for small and household employers. Keep the block separate from deductions, exclude it from both gross pay and total deductions, and give every line a current and a year-to-date amount.
Why isn't FUTA or state unemployment on my pay stub?
Because you do not pay them. FUTA and, in nearly every state, state unemployment tax are employer-only. Alaska, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are the exceptions, where a small employee unemployment contribution does appear as a real deduction.
How much does my employer actually pay on top of my wages?
Roughly 8% to 10% of gross in payroll taxes alone. BLS data for June 2026 puts legally required benefits at $3.40 per hour worked, 7.2% of total compensation for private industry workers, with benefits of all kinds adding about 30%.
Is it a red flag that employer taxes are missing from my stub?
No, that is normal. What is worth checking is whether your own Social Security and Medicare lines are there on a W-2 job, whether year-to-date totals add up, and whether you were handed a 1099 for work that looks like employment.
Does the employer match count as my income?
No. The employer's FICA match is not your wages, is not in Box 1 of your W-2, and is not taxable to you. It funds the same programs your own withholding does.
How do I show employer contributions on a pay stub I create?
Build them as their own line items with a current amount and a year-to-date figure, kept outside gross pay and outside total deductions, so gross minus deductions still equals net exactly.