Methodology

Primary sources first

Each calculator starts with the controlling state statute and administrative rules, followed by the responsible labor agency's official guidance. Payroll blogs and national calculator sites can help identify a question, but they are not treated as authority for the answer.

For Oregon tools, the primary sources are the Oregon Revised Statutes, Oregon Administrative Rules, and guidance published by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI). Every substantive rules section links directly to those sources so a user can check the interpretation.

Rules are translated into explicit conditions

Legal prose is converted into a small set of implementation facts: who is covered, what event triggers overtime, the threshold, the multiplier, what compensation belongs in the regular rate, which hours are included, and which exceptions require a separate tool. The code is not allowed to silently answer questions the inputs cannot support.

Calculation output is auditable

A result is not presented as a magic total. The calculator shows straight-time earnings, the overtime premium, fringe or additional compensation when relevant, and the formula used. That makes it possible for a worker, employer, or payroll clerk to find a wrong input or challenge an interpretation without trusting a black box.

Tests exercise the shipped calculation code

The JavaScript used in the browser is also run directly in an automated test harness. Tests cover exact thresholds, fractional hours, zero and invalid values, overtime-day interactions, and the rule that one hour cannot be counted as overtime twice.

When an agency publishes a worked example, the test suite reproduces it to the cent. The Oregon prevailing wage calculator currently includes authority checks for daily overtime, Saturday overtime, fringe treatment, and a multiple-classification weighted average, plus structural edge cases.

Changing rates are kept separate from stable rules

Prevailing wage trade rates can change quarterly and may depend on the rate book tied to a project's bid date. The PWR calculator therefore asks the user to enter the applicable base and fringe rates from BOLI's official rate book instead of hardcoding a table that can silently go stale. Stable calculation rules belong in code; frequently changing project rates do not.

Scope is deliberately narrow

A calculator can perform arithmetic from user-provided facts. It cannot determine whether a worker is legally exempt, whether a project is covered public work, which trade classification applies, whether time is compensable, or whether an employer's records are complete. Those boundaries are stated on each tool rather than hidden behind a generic disclaimer.

Privacy by architecture

There are no accounts and no database. Calculator inputs are processed in the browser and are not submitted to a server or retained in local storage. Hosting and advertising providers may process ordinary web-request or advertising data as described in the privacy policy, but they do not receive the wage figures typed into a calculator.

Source hierarchy

1. Current statute and administrative rule
2. Official state labor-agency guidance and published examples
3. Project-specific documents or collective bargaining agreements, when applicable
4. Secondary explanations only as a discovery aid

If this site conflicts with an official source, the official source controls. Calculation pages display the scope and source links needed to verify the result.