Short answer: a pay stub has five blocks, and they always appear in the same logical order. Who and when, at the top. Gross earnings, which is everything you were paid for this period. Taxes withheld. Other deductions, such as insurance and retirement. Net pay, which is the amount that reaches your account. Most stubs also print two columns beside each line: this pay period, and year to date. Read the blocks in that order and the stub stops being a wall of abbreviations, because each block is calculated from the one above it.
This is educational information, not tax advice and not financial advice. It explains what the lines mean. It does not tell you what to claim, what to withhold, or whether your employer has calculated yours correctly.
Where this applies: the United States, and specifically the stub of an employee who receives a Form W-2. The line names below are the ones a US payroll system prints. A reader in another country will see a different document with different lines. A Canadian stub, for example, shows Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance deductions and sits behind a T4 slip and a TD1 form rather than a W-2 and a W-4. Nothing here describes it.
The five blocks, in the order they are calculated
Every US pay stub is the same five ideas, however different two employers' formatting looks.
1. Identification and period. Your name, your employer, an employee number, and two sets of dates that people mix up constantly. The pay period is the stretch of work the check covers. The pay date is the day you are paid for it. They are never the same day, and the gap between them is normal.
2. Gross earnings. Everything you earned this period before anything comes out. On an hourly stub this is broken into rates and hours: regular hours at one rate, overtime at another, plus any shift differential, bonus, commission or paid leave. On a salaried stub it is often one line.
3. Taxes withheld. Money your employer sends to a tax authority on your behalf rather than to you. On a US stub this typically includes federal income tax withholding, Social Security and Medicare (the two together are usually labeled FICA, and may be printed separately as OASDI and Med), plus state income tax where your state has one, and sometimes a local or city tax.
4. Other deductions. Everything else that comes out. Health, dental and vision premiums, retirement plan contributions, health savings or flexible spending accounts, life or disability insurance, union dues, and any court-ordered amount such as a garnishment.
5. Net pay. Gross minus everything above it. This is the figure that matches your deposit, and it is the figure a household budget is built on, which is the argument in our guide to budgeting from gross or net income.
Why the order matters more than the layout
Stubs are printed for the payroll system's convenience, not yours, so the blocks are sometimes side by side or reversed. The calculation order never changes, and knowing it answers most of the questions people have when they stare at one.
Payroll starts with gross. It then subtracts the deductions that are taken before tax is calculated, which lowers the figure the tax is worked out on. It calculates the withholding on what is left. Then it subtracts the deductions that come out after tax. What remains is net pay.
That sequence is why two lines of the same size can affect your take-home pay by different amounts, and it is the reason the order is worth understanding rather than memorizing. Reading the stub in calculation order also makes an unfamiliar line easier to place: if it sits above the tax lines it changed your taxable figure, and if it sits below them it did not.
The two columns almost nobody uses
Beside most lines you will find two numbers. One is this pay period. The other is year to date, the running total since January 1.
The year to date column is the more useful of the two and it is the one people skip. A single check is a snapshot that can be distorted by one unusual period: a bonus, an unpaid day, a corrected error, a period when a benefit started. The running total smooths all of that out. It is also the column that quietly becomes your Form W-2 at the end of the year, since the W-2 is built from the same running totals.
For a household that is trying to see a pattern rather than a moment, the running total is worth more than any single stub, in the same way that three months of cash flow tells you more than one month does.
The lines that are not coming out of your money
This is where stubs mislead people, because two very different kinds of line can sit in the same visual area.
Employer contributions. Many stubs show what your employer paid toward your health premium, your retirement plan match, or its share of Social Security and Medicare. These are printed for information. They are not subtracted from your pay, and they are not money you are losing. If you add them into your deductions total, your arithmetic will not close.
Memo or informational lines. Employers commonly print a paid time off balance, an accrual figure, imputed income for a benefit such as employer paid life insurance above a certain value, or a taxable fringe benefit. These are records, not withdrawals, though imputed income can raise the figure your tax is calculated on without ever appearing as cash.
Reimbursements. Money paid back to you for something you spent, such as mileage or travel, is often added on the stub without being ordinary earnings. It arrives in your net pay without being wages.
The test is simple. If the number is not inside the block that runs from gross down to net, it did not move your take-home pay this period.
The ninety-second check that tells you whether the stub adds up
You do not need payroll software to test a stub. Two subtractions do it, and neither one requires knowing any tax rate.
Check one, within the period. Add every tax line and every deduction line for this pay period. Subtract that total from gross pay for the same period. The result should equal net pay. If it does not, either a line has been missed, or an employer contribution or memo line has been added in by mistake, or something is genuinely off.
Check two, across periods. Take last period's year to date figure for any line, add this period's figure for the same line, and compare it to this period's year to date. They should match. This catches the errors people otherwise find in February of the following year, and it is worth doing once a quarter rather than every payday.
Check three, against the bank. Compare net pay to the amount that actually landed. If the stub and the deposit disagree, the question is a banking one rather than a payroll one, and our explainer on how long a deposit takes to clear covers what normally sits in between.
Neither check tells you whether your withholding is the correct amount for your tax situation. That is a different question, and not one a stub can answer on its own.
Are you even entitled to a stub?
This surprises people. There is no federal law requiring your employer to hand you a pay statement. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to keep accurate payroll records and to make them available for inspection, as the U.S. Department of Labor sets out in Fact Sheet #21 on FLSA recordkeeping, but keeping records and giving you a copy are two different obligations.
Whether you receive a stub, how detailed it has to be, and whether it can be electronic only are set by state law, and the rules genuinely differ from state to state. Several states impose no pay statement requirement at all. Your state labor agency is the authority on which rules apply where you work.
When something does not add up
The route here is short, and it starts in one place.
Start with your employer's payroll department. They can see the inputs that produced the stub: your elections, your hours as submitted, your benefit start dates, and any adjustment applied to this period. A large share of surprises are ordinary explanations such as a benefit that began mid period, a retroactive correction, or a pay period that was not a full one. Asking about your own pay record is a normal request.
If the disagreement is about tax rather than about payroll, for instance whether the right amount is being withheld for your situation, that is a question for a tax professional or for the Internal Revenue Service, not for this page and not for your coworker. The IRS publishes its own guidance and a withholding estimator for exactly this.
Keep the stubs. They are the evidence for anything you later need to prove about your income, and they are also the document that lets you compare one period against another. Comparing the stub before a change with the one after it is how most payroll puzzles resolve. Timing questions, such as why some months contain more checks than others, are usually explained by pay frequency rather than by the stub itself, which is covered in weekly, biweekly and semimonthly pay.
FAQ
What are the main sections of a pay stub? Identification and pay period dates, gross earnings, taxes withheld, other deductions, and net pay. Most stubs print each line twice, once for this period and once as a year to date running total.
What is the difference between the pay period and the pay date? The pay period is the range of dates you worked. The pay date is the day the money is paid for that work. They are always offset, and the size of the offset is set by your employer's payroll schedule.
What does YTD mean on my stub? Year to date, meaning the total for that line since January 1 of the current calendar year. It resets every January regardless of when you started the job.
Why is my net pay so much smaller than my salary? Because taxes and elected deductions come out between the two. The stub shows every one of them, and the sum of those lines is exactly the size of the gap.
Who do I ask if my stub looks wrong? Your employer's payroll department first, since they hold the inputs. If the question is about tax rather than about payroll, a tax professional or the IRS is the right place, and this page is not.
Sources: U.S. Department of Labor, Fact Sheet #21, "Recordkeeping Requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act", for the point that the FLSA requires payroll records to be kept rather than pay statements to be issued, read 2026-09-07. Internal Revenue Service, for Form W-2, Form W-4 and its Tax Withholding Estimator, named as documents rather than quoted. No tax rate, threshold or dollar figure appears on this page, because those change and a stub can be read without them.