Job Offer Comparison Worksheet: Salary, Time, Benefits and Risk

The highest headline salary is not always the offer that leaves you with the most money or the best life. This worksheet helps you compare two concrete offers without pretending every benefit can be reduced to a single precise score.

Copy the table into a document and fill it with written terms and realistic household costs. Use the same currency and annual period for both offers. Mark unknowns explicitly instead of treating missing information as a generous benefit.

Step one: build the cash comparison

Use a qualified local calculation or reliable official tools for taxes where needed. This worksheet is a comparison framework, not a tax calculator. Avoid subtracting payroll deductions twice if they are already reflected in the take-home figure.

Step two: keep uncertain rewards separate

Record target bonus, profit-sharing, employer retirement contributions and equity on additional lines. For each, enter eligibility, vesting and payment dates. Build a conservative scenario with zero discretionary bonus rather than relying on the most recent strong year.

The IRS description of retirement-plan terms helps distinguish plan contributions from ordinary cash pay in US offers. Use the actual plan documents to establish your rights.

Step three: compare your time

Write down contracted hours, likely actual hours, commute days, on-call duties and usable paid leave. Do not add the notional value of paid leave to a salary that already pays you during that leave; that would count the same money twice.

Instead, compare annual cash alongside estimated hours worked and the predictability of the schedule. Keep household preferences visible: a shorter commute may be worth more to you than a small difference in a calculated hourly figure.

A worked example using invented numbers

Offer A provides 42,000 in annual take-home cash and requires 27,000 of listed essential spending, leaving 15,000. Offer B provides 38,000 and requires 21,000, leaving 17,000. B leaves 2,000 more under these assumptions.

If A adds a possible 4,000 after-tax bonus, A wins in that scenario but loses without it. Do not average the outcomes using a made-up probability. Ask for payout history and decide how much uncertainty your budget can tolerate.

Fill the worksheet with a complete example

These figures extend the fictional example above. All amounts use one currency; cash and costs are annual. The hours are assumed actual work, excluding leave and commuting. Keep those definitions consistent when entering your own offers.

A needs an after-tax payout of 2,000 to tie B’s remaining cash, assuming costs stay fixed. Its illustrated 4,000 payout puts it 2,000 ahead, but it still requires 280 additional working hours. You might accept that trade, but it should be visible in the comparison.

The per-hour calculation uses all guaranteed take-home divided by assumed actual work hours. It is a personal comparison, not the contractual hourly rate. Do not use it to determine overtime entitlement or add a second cash value for leave already included in annual salary.

Copy these calculations into your own comparison

• Remaining cash = annual take-home − annual essential costs.
• Required after-tax bonus for A to match B = B’s remaining cash − A’s guaranteed remaining cash, with a floor of zero.
• Take-home per working hour = annual take-home ÷ actual annual working hours.
• Annual time difference = A’s working hours − B’s working hours.

If an employer quotes only a gross bonus, estimate its net value under the rules that apply to you before using the second calculation. Keep unvested shares and retirement contributions in separate lines instead of treating them as current cash.

Add a company-evidence note beside each offer

For illustration, the latest Fair Pay & Worker Respect records retrieved from Mashinii on 24 September 2026 were −30 for Amazon and +10 for Costco, both assessed on 26 April. The scale is −100 to +100; these are selected broad assessments, not percentages, salary comparisons or a ranking of your local workplaces.

Write down a relevant issue to investigate through each score’s evidence, then ask how it applies to the exact role and location. Do not add a company score numerically to salary or pretend a positive assessment makes an unaffordable offer viable.

Step four: test the downside

What happens after a job loss, a family emergency or an early departure? Check notice terms, health coverage, immigration dependence and unvested benefits. In the US, the Department of Labor’s FMLA eligibility summary shows why family-leave protection cannot simply be assumed for every new employee.

Finish with evidence, not a magic total

Write three non-negotiables and three unresolved questions beside the table. Use Amazon’s company research or Microsoft’s company score to inform broader employer questions, while keeping the local offer central.

If the decision changes when one uncertain benefit disappears, you have found the issue to clarify before accepting. That is more useful than a spreadsheet that declares a winner by hiding uncertainty.

Sources and programme terms checked 24 September 2026. Examples identified as hypothetical are illustrative, not company data.