I remember my first real pay stub. I'd been working a summer job bagging groceries, and I'd been doing the math in my head all week — hours times hourly rate, times two weeks, ought to be around $400. When payday came, the stub listed something like twenty different numbers on it, and the one at the bottom said $327.
I stared at it for a while trying to figure out where the missing $73 had gone. Nobody had ever explained what any of the numbers meant. I eventually asked the store manager, who shrugged and said "taxes." That was the extent of my financial education at seventeen.
If you've ever looked at a pay stub and felt a similar confusion — why does gross pay not match net pay, what's FICA, why are there two columns of numbers, what does YTD mean — this guide is for you. I'll walk through every section of a typical pay stub, explain what each field represents, and tell you what to check each pay period to catch errors before they become problems.
This is going to be comprehensive. Use the sections as a reference. You don't need to read it start to finish.
Why knowing how to read a pay stub matters
Pay stubs aren't just receipts. They're the primary record of your employment, your earnings, and your tax withholdings. They're what you'll use when you apply for a mortgage, verify income for a rental application, check that your W-2 is correct at tax time, or dispute a payroll error.
Errors on pay stubs are more common than most people realize. Payroll software is generally reliable, but the inputs — your W-4, your elected benefits, your overtime hours, your health insurance enrollment — pass through humans at some point, and humans make mistakes. The only way to catch those errors is to know what you're looking at.
Also: your pay stub contains almost all the information on your W-2, months before the W-2 arrives. If you understand your stubs throughout the year, tax season stops being a surprise.
The header: who, what, when
The top of every pay stub has basic identifying information. This section is boring but important to verify.
Your employer's legal name, address, and often their tax ID. This matters more than you'd think. If you have multiple employers in a year, confirming that each stub shows the right company helps you make sense of your W-2s later. If your employer's legal name differs from the brand name you know them by — very common for parent companies and franchise operators — your stub will show the legal name.
Your name, employee ID, and often your address. Verify that these are correct. If your address on the stub is outdated, your W-2 will go to the wrong place in January. If your name has changed and your payroll record hasn't caught up, your W-2 won't match your Social Security records and you'll have a tax filing headache.
The pay period dates. The window of time the stub covers — for example, "March 1 to March 15." Not the same as the pay date.
The pay date. The actual day you got paid. The IRS uses the pay date, not the pay period dates, to determine which tax year your earnings belong to. A paycheck for work performed in late December 2025 but paid on January 2, 2026 is 2026 income. This matters for year-end planning.
Your pay frequency. Weekly, biweekly (26 checks a year), semimonthly (24 checks), or monthly. These differ from each other in subtle ways that affect how your salary converts to per-check amounts.
Earnings: what you were paid for
The earnings section shows gross pay — the total you earned before anything was taken out. This is usually broken into categories.
Regular earnings. Straight-time hours worked at your base rate. For salaried employees, this is often shown as a flat amount per pay period rather than hours times rate.
Overtime. Any hours beyond 40 in a workweek, paid at 1.5x your regular rate in most jurisdictions. If you worked overtime and it doesn't appear here, that's a red flag.
Double time. Some employers pay 2x for work on holidays, Sundays, or beyond a certain hours threshold.
Bonus, commission, tips. Extra compensation beyond base pay. Each of these often gets its own line so you can see what you're being paid for.
PTO, sick, holiday. Paid time off that you took during the period. This is part of your earnings even though you didn't work those hours.
Retroactive pay. Adjustments for previous pay periods — usually because of a raise that took effect mid-period, a correction to previously-underpaid hours, or similar.
For each earnings line, you'll usually see the hours (or quantity), the rate, and the total amount. At the bottom, the section sums to gross pay. Gross pay is the starting point for everything else on the stub.
Taxes: money going to the government
The taxes section lists every tax withheld from your paycheck. Tax terminology is confusing because the same tax goes by multiple names, so I'll list both the official and common versions.
Federal Income Tax. Often labeled "Federal W/H," "Fed Income Tax," "FIT," or "FITW." This is the amount withheld for your federal income tax bill, based on what you declared on your W-4 form. If you end up owing a lot or getting a huge refund at tax time, adjust your W-4 to change this withholding.
Social Security Tax. Often labeled "OASDI," "SS Tax," or "FICA-SS." This is 6.2% of your wages up to the annual Social Security wage base, which changes each year. Your employer pays a matching 6.2% that you don't see on your stub.
Medicare Tax. Often labeled "Medicare," "Fed MED/EE," or "FICA-Med." This is 1.45% of all your wages with no cap. High earners pay an additional 0.9% above certain thresholds.
State Income Tax. Labeled with your state's abbreviation or just "State W/H." Not all states have income tax — if you live in one of the no-tax states, this line won't exist.
Local Income Tax. Some cities and counties have their own income taxes. If you live or work in one, you'll see a line here. If not, you won't.
State Disability, State Unemployment, Paid Family Leave. Some states (California, New York, New Jersey, and others) have additional mandatory withholdings for state insurance programs. These show up as separate lines and vary by state.
The total of all these deductions is your total tax withholding for the pay period.
Deductions: money going somewhere else
Deductions are things other than taxes that reduce your paycheck. The distinction between pre-tax and post-tax deductions matters a lot, and I'll explain why.
Pre-tax deductions come out of your gross pay before taxes are calculated. This means you pay less tax because your taxable income is reduced. Common pre-tax deductions include traditional 401(k) contributions, health insurance premiums (if your employer offers a Section 125 plan), dental and vision insurance, Health Savings Account (HSA) contributions, Flexible Spending Account (FSA) contributions, and commuter benefits for parking and transit.
Post-tax deductions come out after taxes are calculated. They don't reduce your tax bill. Common ones include Roth 401(k) contributions (you pay tax now so you don't pay tax at retirement), supplemental life insurance premiums, garnishments (child support, tax levies, court judgments), union dues, and charitable contributions through payroll.
Employer contributions. Some stubs also list employer-paid benefits for informational purposes — the portion of your health insurance your employer covers, their 401(k) match, their share of FICA. These aren't deducted from your pay. They're there so you can see the full cost of your employment.
The YTD column: running totals for the year
Most pay stubs have two columns of numbers for most line items: the current pay period and the year-to-date (YTD) totals. YTD is the sum of everything since January 1.
YTD matters for several reasons. It's how you track your progress toward annual 401(k) contribution limits. It's how you verify your total income for loan applications. It's what you'll compare against your W-2 at tax time to make sure everything adds up.
The thing to know for now: YTD resets on January 1. Your first pay stub of the year will have small YTD numbers that might look like errors but aren't. By December, your YTD numbers should match your W-2 — with some adjustments for pre-tax deductions, which I'll get to.
Net pay: what you actually take home
At the bottom of the stub is your net pay — gross pay minus taxes minus deductions. This is the amount that hits your bank account (or, for paper checks, the amount on the check).
If you have direct deposit split across multiple accounts, the stub usually shows how the net pay was distributed.
The math should always work: Gross Pay − Total Taxes − Total Deductions = Net Pay. If those numbers don't reconcile to the dollar, something is wrong with the stub, and you should ask payroll to explain.
What to check every pay period
Honestly, most people never look at their pay stubs past the net pay number. I was one of those people for years. Here's what to actually check.
Gross pay matches your expected hours or salary. If you're hourly, multiply hours worked by your rate — does it match? If you're salaried, is the gross pay consistent with previous periods, allowing for bonuses, overtime, or other adjustments you know about?
Federal and state withholding are reasonable. Dramatic changes in withholding from one period to the next, without any change on your end, can indicate a W-4 got lost or an error was introduced. Stable paychecks should have stable withholding.
Benefits deductions match your elections. If you elected $200/month for health insurance and your stub shows $300, something's wrong. Benefits deductions often change at open enrollment — watch your first few stubs after enrollment changes to make sure the new amounts are correct.
YTD progression is reasonable. Your YTD should grow by roughly the current-period amount each pay period. If your YTD jumps or stalls unexpectedly, investigate.
The math reconciles. Gross minus taxes minus deductions should equal net pay. Every time.
Common pay stub questions and sources of confusion
Why does my gross pay not match my annual salary divided by pay periods? If you're paid biweekly (26 checks a year), your salary divides by 26. Semimonthly (24 checks) divides by 24. These are not the same. People sometimes expect monthly salary divided by number of pay periods and get confused when the math doesn't match.
Why is my Box 1 on the W-2 lower than my YTD gross? Because pre-tax deductions reduce your taxable wages. Your gross YTD includes everything; your W-2 Box 1 excludes pre-tax benefits and retirement contributions. The difference is the total of your pre-tax deductions for the year. You're being taxed on less income — that's a feature, not a bug.
What's the difference between a pay stub and a paycheck? A paycheck is (was) the actual check you received. A pay stub is the document explaining what went into that check. Today, most people have direct deposit and the "check" is purely electronic, but the stub still exists as a record.
Can I use my pay stub as proof of income? For most purposes — apartment applications, small loans, personal verification — yes. For mortgages and some formal financial applications, the lender may require additional documentation like W-2s or tax returns. But the pay stub is almost always the starting point.
When something looks wrong
Start with payroll or HR. Most errors get fixed quickly if you catch them the same pay period they appear. The longer an error sits uncorrected, the harder it is to untangle.
Keep records. Download or print your stubs — some payroll portals only keep 12-18 months of history, and you'll want older records for your own files. I'd recommend saving every stub as a PDF to a folder on your computer or a cloud drive.
For serious discrepancies — missing wages, suspected intentional underpayment, wage theft — your state's department of labor has formal complaint processes. Most payroll errors are honest mistakes, but the formal routes exist for the ones that aren't.
The short version
A pay stub has five main sections: header information, earnings, taxes, deductions, and net pay. Most have YTD columns alongside current-period amounts. Gross pay minus taxes minus deductions equals net pay, always. Pre-tax deductions reduce your taxable wages; post-tax deductions don't. Check your stubs regularly, save them as PDFs, and don't assume the numbers are right just because they came out of a computer.
If you want to take the next step and actually get your pay stub data into a spreadsheet — for tax reconciliation, mortgage prep, self-employment tracking, or just personal recordkeeping — that's what StubSheet does (disclosure: I built it). But even without a tool, understanding your stubs is a financial literacy superpower. Take the fifteen minutes to actually read the next one you get. You'll be surprised what you find.