Weekly Wage and How it is Calculated
The basic weekly wage is an important value used to calculate Social Security Contributions, and is reported in the FS3 and end-of-year submission files.
It is calculated differently for employees working fixed or variable hours.
Employees Working Fixed Hours
For full-time or part-time employees with fixed hours, the weekly wage is averaged based on the salary in their agreement.
For example, if someone has an annual basic salary of €15000, we would divide it by 52 weeks to get a weekly wage of €288.46.
Similarly, for someone earning a monthly amount (e.g. €1000), we would multiply this by 12 months and divide it by 52 weeks to get the weekly wage (in this example, €230.77)
This weekly wage will be used regardless of any basic pay overrides during payroll or unpaid leave.
Employees Working Variable Hours
For employees working variable hours, the weekly wage is calculated with each payroll. This is done by taking the Basic Pay and dividing it by the number of weekly contributions to be paid.
For instance, if an employee earns €230 and you mark 2 weeks worked (for which contribution is to be paid), then the weekly wage would be calculated as €230 / 2 = €115