How to Calculate Sick Pay Step by Step: Days, Rate & Percent

The formula in one line

Sick pay equals sick days times your daily rate times your pay percent divided by 100. In symbols: pay = days × daily rate × percent ÷ 100. That is the whole method — everything else on this page is finding the three inputs honestly and checking the answer backwards. On the worked example, 5 sick days at $200 a day and 100% pay earn $1,000.00.

Step 1: Find your sick days

Your sick days are the days you were off sick that your policy pays for, not every day you were ill. The reliable source is your claim record or your employer's absence log. For one working week off that is usually 5 days. Be careful about waiting days: many policies pay nothing for the first one to three days of a claim, and those days must come off the count before you multiply. If your claim spans a weekend, count only working days unless your policy says otherwise — a Monday-to-Friday absence is 5 sick days, not 7, even though you were ill for a calendar week.

Step 2: Find your daily rate

Your daily rate is your pay for one working day. If you are paid weekly, divide the weekly wage by the days you work each week: a $1,000 weekly wage over five days is $200 a day, but over six days it is $166.67, and that $33.33 difference is $166.67 over five sick days. If you are paid monthly, divide by the working days in the month instead of by a fixed number — months have different numbers of working days, so a fixed divisor quietly misstates the rate. Some policies state the daily rate directly, and that figure wins over any figure you derive, because the policy's rate is the one it pays.

Step 3: Find your pay percent

Your pay percent is what fraction of your daily rate sick pay covers, and it lives in your employer's policy or your insurance terms. Full pay is 100%, which makes each sick day worth a whole day's pay. Many policies pay a fraction instead — 80% is common, 50% is common after a longer absence — and some policies change the percent partway through a claim, paying full pay for the first stretch and a fraction after it. If your claim spans a percent change, do not average the percents: calculate each stretch separately and add them, as the example below shows.

Step 4: Multiply, in order

First multiply days by daily rate to get the full-pay value of the absence. Then multiply by the percent and divide by 100. On the example: 5 days × $200.00 is $1,000.00 at full pay, and $1,000.00 × 100 ÷ 100 is $1,000.00. Doing it in two steps matters, because it lets you see which input is doing the damage when the answer looks wrong — a total that seems too low is usually a percent below 100 that you forgot, and a total that seems too high is usually waiting days you forgot to subtract.

Step 5: Check the answer backwards

Work the answer backwards before you accept it. Divide the pay by the daily rate and the percent to recover the days: $1,000.00 ÷ $200.00 ÷ 1.00 is 5 days, which matches the claim. Divide the pay by the days and the percent to recover the daily rate: $1,000.00 ÷ 5 ÷ 1.00 is $200.00, which matches the wage. And divide the pay by the days and the daily rate to recover the percent: $1,000.00 ÷ 5 ÷ $200.00 is 1.00, or 100%, which matches the policy. If any of the three recovered figures disagrees with what you typed in, one of your inputs is wrong — find it before you argue about the payment.

Three worked examples

One week off at full pay: 5 days × $200.00 × 100 ÷ 100 is $1,000.00. This is the headline case, and it is the one most full-pay employees should start from.

One week off at 80% pay: 5 days × $200.00 × 80 ÷ 100 is $800.00. The days and the rate are identical, but the percent takes $200.00 off the claim — the percent is doing all the work here.

A claim split across a percent change: 3 days at 100% plus 2 days at 80%, all at $200.00 a day, is $600.00 + $320.00, or $920.00. Averaging the percents to 90% would give $900.00, which is $20.00 short — split the claim at the change date instead of averaging.

Common mistakes

Forgetting the percent. Multiplying days by daily rate alone gives the full-pay value, not the sick pay, and on an 80% policy that overstates a five-day claim by $200.00. Always apply the percent, even when it is 100%, so the step is visible.

Counting calendar days instead of working days. A Monday-to-Friday absence is 5 sick days, not 7, unless your policy pays weekends. Counting 7 days at $200.00 overstates the claim by $400.00 at full pay.

Forgetting waiting days. A five-day claim with two waiting days pays for three days, which is $600.00 at $200.00 and full pay. Subtract waiting days from the day count before multiplying, not from the money afterwards — the result is the same here, but only because the rate is flat across the claim.

Using the wrong daily-rate divisor. A weekly wage divided by 7 gives a calendar-day rate, not a working-day rate, and it understates every sick day. Divide by the days you actually work each week.

Try your own numbers on the sick-pay-calculator — it runs the same formula, shows the branches and the reverses, and lets you work any sick pay backwards to the days, rate or percent behind it.