A pay stub is a receipt for your labor. It shows what you earned, what got taken out and why, and what you are actually being paid. Most people check the bottom number and move on, which is fine until the day something looks wrong — and then the stub is the only document that can tell you what happened.
Every stub is organized the same way underneath the formatting differences: earnings, taxes, deductions, net pay, and a running year-to-date total for all of it. Once you can read those five parts, you can read any stub from any employer.
The header: who, when, and for what period
The top of the stub identifies the employer and you, and — the part people skip — the pay period and the pay date. The pay period is the stretch of time you are being paid for (say, June 1 through June 14). The pay date is when the money actually moves, which is usually a few days after the period ends because payroll needs time to run.
This gap trips people up. The check you get on June 19 is usually for work you did through June 14, not for the days right up to payday. If you are trying to reconcile hours or figure out whether a raise took effect, the pay period dates are what tell you which work this stub covers.
Earnings: your gross, broken out
The earnings section lists everything you made this period before deductions. For an hourly worker it shows your rate, your hours, and the total — often split into regular hours and overtime hours, since overtime is usually paid at 1.5 times your rate. For a salaried worker it shows your flat per-period amount. Tips, bonuses, commissions, and holiday pay each get their own line if you earned them.
Add every earnings line together and you have your gross pay for the period. That total is the number every deduction below is measured against, and it is the honest figure for what your work was worth this cycle — before anyone took anything out.
Taxes: the mandatory lines
The tax section holds the deductions you do not get to opt out of. Federal income tax is withheld based on your W-4. Social Security, sometimes labeled FICA, takes 6.2% of your wages up to a $184,500 ceiling in 2026. Medicare takes 1.45% of everything with no ceiling. If your wages for the year cross $200,000, an Additional Medicare line of 0.9% appears on top.
Below the federal lines, most states pull state income tax, and some cities or school districts add a local tax. A Payrollix stub lists these in a taxes section in a consistent order — Federal Income Tax, Social Security, Medicare, then State and Local — so you can find the same line on every check and compare it period to period.
Deductions: the ones you signed up for
Separate from taxes are your voluntary and involuntary deductions. Voluntary ones are things you elected: your share of health, dental, or vision premiums, retirement contributions, HSA or FSA money, life insurance. These are often flagged as pre-tax, which means they came out before taxes were calculated and quietly lowered your tax bill.
Involuntary deductions are ones you did not choose — the most common being a wage garnishment ordered by a court for child support or debt. If you see a garnishment line and were not expecting it, that is worth a conversation with your payroll or HR contact, because it is legally required and cannot simply be turned off at your request.
Net pay and the YTD column: where you catch errors
Net pay is the arithmetic result of the whole stub: gross earnings, minus taxes, minus deductions. It is the number that hits your bank account. If you have direct deposit, this is what moves, and it is the figure to sanity-check against your balance.
The most useful column on the entire stub is the one most people ignore: year-to-date. Every line — gross, each tax, each deduction, net — carries a running total for the calendar year next to the current-period amount. This is where mistakes show up. Caps like the Social Security ceiling are measured against your YTD wages, not a single check, so if a number ever looks off, the YTD column is where you start. It is also the figure you will want when you apply for a loan or a lease and someone asks what you have earned so far this year.
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