FUTA taxable wage base dashboard

The Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) taxes employers 6.0% on the first $7,000 each employee earns in a year. Employers that pay their state unemployment taxes on time receive a credit of up to 5.4 percentage points, so most pay a net 0.6%, at most $42 per worker per year. The $7,000 taxable wage base has not changed since 1983. FUTA revenue pays for state administration of unemployment insurance, half the cost of Extended Benefits, and loans to states whose unemployment trust funds run short.

This dashboard estimates the FUTA revenue from raising the wage base to $43,000 in 2026 and then indexing it each year to the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), rounding the base to the nearest $100, while holding the 6.0% rate and the 5.4% maximum credit constant. The $43,000 figure is roughly the median annual wage of U.S. workers in 2023 ($43,223, per the Social Security Administration's wage statistics). Under CBO's inflation projections the base reaches $53,200 in 2035.

The estimates on this tab adjust the model's output for two corrections measured from workers' Census survey responses: wages at FUTA-exempt employers (government agencies and nonprofits, about 23% of wages under the $43,000 base) are removed, and the wage base applies per employer rather than per worker, as the law does. Before these adjustments the model's output is $26.4B in 2026 and $317.4B over ten years; both series appear in the CSV, and the Validation and methods tab documents the adjustments.

All years on this tab are calendar (tax) years. The estimates count only the FUTA line; state unemployment taxes, which would also rise because states must match the federal base, are discussed under Validation and methods.