Payroll taxes
What is New-employer rate?
When a business registers for state unemployment tax, it has no track record of layoffs, so the state cannot calculate an experience-based rate. Instead it assigns a flat new-employer rate, often the state average for the industry, which the business pays until it accumulates enough history (typically two to three years) to be experience-rated.
HiringMath defaults to the new-employer rate everywhere, because that is the rate a business actually faces the moment it makes its first hire, which is exactly when the cost of that hire is being decided.
Example
A startup hiring its first employee in Georgia pays the 2.7% new-employer SUI rate on the first $9,500 of wages, not the lower experience-rated rate an established Georgia employer with no claims might earn.