Employer Parity Surcharge

Employer Parity Surcharge Calculator

The surcharge that keeps immigrant hiring at parity with domestic wages (formerly published as the Parity Wedge). The employer pays the same for an immigrant hire as for a domestic one — the domestic-equivalent prevailing wage plus the same payroll tax. The worker's own wage plus the surcharge on it together equal that domestic wage, so a 90% surcharge means the worker receives a little over half the domestic rate in Year 1, rising toward full parity as the rate declines with tenure. The surcharge funds the communities hosting the worker's family. Rates come from a published scoring formula over quantifiable factors — credentials and licensure, English-language score, years of experience, and an age band targeting young adults — with no reference to origin country.

Hire Profile

Occupation / credential class

Illustrative landing points of the published scoring formula — indicative, not statutory. Origin country plays no role.

Domestic-equivalent prevailing wage: $50,000

The market rate for the work — the wage at which domestic workers can actually be found. Hard manual labor is not fillable domestically below roughly $50,000.

Employer Pays (any hire)

$58,750

$50,000 wage + $8,750 employer payroll tax (17.5%) — identical for a domestic hire

Worker Gross (Year 1)

$26,316

= $50,000 ÷ 1.90 — wage + surcharge on it = the domestic wage

Surcharge → Communities (Year 1)

$23,684

~90% of the worker's wage, remitted at payroll

The worker's Year 1 paycheck, like any worker'sGross $26,316 − employee payroll tax $2,763 (10.5%) − income tax $1,195 = $22,358 take-home, plus full Distributed Healthcare, Skills Wallet accrual, and a path to permanent residency.

INDICATIVE — final calibration is NSB rule-making. The NSB has authority to set the formula weights against measured supply and demand; it operates under a published, appealable, methodology-audited process, and localities can nudge rates within published bounds for capacity, culture, and employer need. This calculator does not forecast the weights the NSB will set.

9-Year Tenure Decline Schedule

Year	Surcharge rate	Worker gross	Surcharge → communities	Worker take-home (after payroll + income tax)
1	90.0%	$26,316	$23,684	$22,358
2	81.0%	$27,624	$22,376	$23,411
3	72.0%	$29,070	$20,930	$24,576
4	63.0%	$30,675	$19,325	$25,869
5	54.0%	$32,468	$17,532	$27,313
6	45.0%	$34,483	$15,517	$28,936
7	36.0%	$36,765	$13,235	$30,774
8	27.0%	$39,370	$10,630	$32,872
9	9.0%	$45,872	$4,128	$38,109

The per-worker rate declines with tenure to ~10% of its starting level by Year 9, so the worker's gross rises toward the full domestic-equivalent wage as they integrate. Rows marked ✕ fall below the minimum-wage floor and are not legally fillable at that wage and year. Employer cost is $58,750 in every row — never less than a domestic hire. Aggregate community revenue stays roughly flat from Year 1 via residency-mix: each year's arriving workers enter at the top of the schedule as earlier arrivals move down it.

Why This Works

No Cheap-Labor Arbitrage

The employer pays $58,750 all-in whether the hire is domestic or immigrant — there is never a discount for hiring an immigrant, so domestic wages are never undercut. Misclassification is payroll-tax fraud with corporate liability.

Formula-Scored, Origin-Neutral

The rate comes from a published scoring formula over quantifiable factors — credentials and licensure, English-language score, years of experience, an age band targeting young adults. Origin country plays no role.

Communities Funded

The surcharge pools nationally; each host community draws its share by immigrant count and local need, spent locally on the services newcomers use — school capacity, primary care, library ESL. Targeted, not ring-fenced.

Priced Out By Design

Near the minimum wage the arithmetic closes the door: the post-surcharge wage would be illegal to pay, and raising the wage costs more than a domestic hire. The externality price of schools, healthcare, and services for the worker's family must be met, so ultra-low-wage substitution is priced out of existence.

The Domestic-Share Test — rates are dynamic by design

The declared prevailing wage is verified by revealed preference: for any job category with roughly ten or more workers in a community, about 20% must be domestic employees. If the domestic share falls below that floor — the sign the declared wage is a lowball no American actually works for — the surcharge for that category in that community escalates automatically until the offered wage rises to a level domestic workers accept. The same mechanism balances labor supply and demand. Thresholds indicative; the escalation schedule is NSB rule-making.

Calculations per Blueprint Ch 21. All percentages are illustrative landing points of the published scoring formula — indicative, not statutory. Income tax estimated at single-filer brackets on gross less the employee payroll deduction. The minimum-wage floor shown is ~$10/hr full-time; higher state minimums bind where applicable. Payroll tax 28% total (10.5% employee / 17.5% employer; governor corridor 25.0–29.0%).

Architecture version: v10.2

Scoring version: v10.2 (rerun 2026-04-30)