How This Calculator Works
The calculator starts with your annual base salary pulled straight from the current pay tables for your craft, grade, and step — APWU clerk grades PS-04 through PS-11, city carrier Tables 1 and 2, mail handler Tables 1 and 2, plus PSE, CCA, and MHA rates. Rural carriers, RCAs, and EAS enter the annual salary from their PS Form 50 or earnings statement, since rural pay depends on your route’s evaluated hours. That salary is divided by 26 to get your biweekly base, then every deduction on a real USPS earnings statement is applied in order: FERS (0.8%, 3.1%, or 4.4% depending on when you were hired), Social Security (6.2% up to the $176,100 wage cap), Medicare (1.45%), estimated federal withholding based on your filing status, state tax, and then your elective deductions — FEHB premium, TSP contribution, other pre-tax items, and union dues.
A Worked Example
Take a PS-06 Step E clerk earning $67,894, married filing jointly in Pennsylvania, hired after 2014 (4.4% FERS), with a $175 FEHB premium, a $500 biweekly TSP contribution, and APWU dues. Gross pay per period is about $2,611. Roughly $477 of that goes to actual taxes and FERS withholding, and another $700 goes to TSP and health insurance — money that’s still working for you, just not in your pocket on payday. Estimated net: about $1,435. That distinction matters: the “where did half my check go” feeling usually isn’t taxes, it’s savings and benefits you chose.
Premium Pay: Where Postal Checks Get Interesting
Few jobs have as many pay multipliers as USPS. Overtime pays 1.5x your hourly rate. Penalty overtime pays double for work beyond 10 hours a day or 56 in a service week. Night differential adds 10% for hours between 6 PM and 6 AM, Sunday premium adds 25%, and holiday worked pay effectively doubles your rate for the holiday. City carriers on a T-6 string get a 2.1% carrier technician premium on everything — toggle it on above. For the full rules on when each premium applies, see our guides to USPS overtime rules and night differential and Sunday premium.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
First: don’t divide your annual salary by 24. USPS pays 26 periods a year (27 in 2026 — see the pay period calendar), so a biweekly check is smaller than a semi-monthly one would be. Second: union dues auto-fill with national defaults ($33.84 NALC, ~$31 NPMHU, ~$29.03 NRLCA, ~$25 APWU) — your local may charge more, so check your earnings statement and override the field. Third: non-career employees (CCAs, PSEs, MHAs, RCAs) don’t pay FERS and have limited FEHB options; the calculator flags this automatically when you pick those crafts. If any line on your paycheck doesn’t match what you expected, our line-by-line pay stub guide walks through every code, and the step increase guide explains when your next raise lands.