Employment contract legalese

The year has 52 weeks so $1000 bi-weekly should be $26k not $24K. I find that confusing right there. I'd suggest you sit down with payroll or HR, find out exactly how your salary is calculated. Then if you feel you were confused or misled you can certainly discuss.

As I read it, you should be making $1,000.00 biweekly if you're working a 32 hour work week. I would go to whoever does payroll with that contract and ask if there's a mistake on your paycheck (you are accounting for deductions for taxes, etc, right?).

IAAL and I agree that I would read this as, your PART TIME salary is $1000 bi-weekly, i.e., $500/week, and that is based on your working 80% time. If you worked full-time I would expect that you would earn the additional 20% on top of that. Don't present this as renegotiating, just say you've noticed a discrepancy between your contract and the amount you're receiving.

our starting part-time salary (exempt) will be $1,000 bi-weekly ($24,000 annualized) The "part time" in this sentence leads me to believe that your salary will be 24k. The rest sounds like boilerplate that should have been edited for greater clarity, because yeah, it's a bit confusing. This is totally something you can call and ask about though. I've done that in the past and nobody shot me out of a cannon or anything.

Sorry to threadsit, but mono blanco, you are correct: the job offer states $26k. Misfigured that when I was changing the numbers for the post. (This misfacility with figures being another reason I'm asking for second opinions here!) Also, yes, it is not withholding that is being taken out, as I am receiving exactly 80% of the base pay ($800, say) and then having taxes, etc. taken out from that figure.

Ugh, that wording is so awful. One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is this sentence: "You are advised that all salary and benefits are based on full-time employment and may be prorated if your hours should be reduced for any reason." Your hours were never reduced; they are at their starting level, and as the letter states, "your starting part-time salary (exempt) will be $1,000." I have a bad feeling that the misleading wording is deliberate and that the company will resist settling the misunderstanding in your favor. I think pushing against this is important, but I'd be prepared for the conversation to be frustrating, emotionally exhausting, and chalk full of reasons why they're so sorry but they can't raise it to $1,000 because of some mysteriously immutable policy. Good luck!

IANA lawyer or an HR person, but I think the first sentence is pretty definitive even though the rest is confusing. You'll make $1000 biweekly, which apparently is 80% of what a full-timer gets.

Tax withholding was my first thought, too. Whether 20% withholding is a surprising amount or not depends on your state and what the actual contract numbers are (since you say you changed them for clarity in this question), but it's not wildly out of line with my experience. If your withholding did get messed up somehow, you can file a new W-4 with your employer to fix it.

Sometimes there are also other items deducted aside from tax withholding, too. Make sure you go through the paycheck line by line to see what's being withheld and for what - I'm assuming you're getting $800 into your bank account or on a check? They could also be deducting for retirement accounts, HSA or FSA accounts, or other things, like where I work they also deduct parking fees before the paycheck comes to me.