Salary to hourly calculator

How the formula works

Every pay period is the same pile of money sliced a different number of times a year, so the honest way to convert between them is to funnel through a single annual figure and divide back down. Turning a salary into an hourly wage is one division by the hours you work in a year — hours per week times weeks per year:

and going the other way is the same relationship rearranged — multiply the hourly wage back up by the hours in the year:

At the usual full-time assumption of a 40-hour week worked all 52 weeks, that denominator is the number you will see everywhere: 40 × 52 = 2,080 hours a year. Change either figure — part-time hours, or unpaid weeks off — and the whole set of conversions moves with it.

One thing this does not do is touch tax. Every figure here is gross pay — what you earn before income tax, Social Security and Medicare come out. What actually lands in your account is smaller; to see that number, run the salary through the take-home pay calculator.

What each input means

Pay amount & basis

Type the number you already know and tell the calculator what it is — an annual salary, an hourly wage, or a weekly or monthly figure. Everything is converted to an annual total first (hourly becomes amount × hours × weeks; weekly becomes amount × weeks; monthly becomes amount × 12), and every other period is derived from that.

Hours per week

The hours you are actually paid for in a normal week. Full time is 40; drop it for part-time work. This sets the size of the work year and so the hourly rate — 30 hours a week is a 1,560-hour year, not 2,080.

Weeks worked per year

Usually 52. Lower it if you take unpaid weeks off — a contractor who takes three unpaid weeks works 49 — because those weeks earn nothing and raise the hourly rate the remaining weeks must carry.

Paid time off

Vacation and holiday days you are paid for without working, in days per year. On a salary this changes nothing about your annual pay, but it does mean your effective hourly rate — pay divided by the hours you truly work — is higher, because you are paid for days you sit out. It does not change the plain hourly conversion; it appears on its own line.

A worked example

The worksheet's defaults: a $75,000 annual salary, a 40-hour week worked all 52 weeks, with 10 paid days off.

• The work year is 40 × 52 = 2,080 hours — the standard 2,080.
• Hourly wage: $75,000 / 2,080 = $36.06 an hour.
• The rest is the same annual figure sliced differently: monthly is $75,000 / 12 = $6,250.00; biweekly is $75,000 / 26 = $2,884.62; weekly is $75,000 / 52 = $1,442.31.
• Effective hourly including PTO: the 10 paid days off are 10 × 8 = 80 paid hours you do not work, so you actually work 2,000 hours. $75,000 / 2,000 = $37.50 per hour actually worked — more than the $36.06 headline rate, because the salary covers the days off too.

The full conversion for the default salary:

Assumptions and limits

• Every figure is gross — pay before income tax, Social Security and Medicare. Your take-home is lower; run the number through the take-home pay calculator to see after-tax pay.
• The default work year is 40 hours × 52 weeks = 2,080 hours. Change the hours or weeks and every conversion changes with them.
• Overtime, bonuses, commissions, shift differentials and unpaid overtime are excluded — this is base pay only, spread evenly.
• Biweekly divides the year into 26 checks and semi-monthly into 24; two months a year a biweekly earner banks a third paycheck, which this even split does not single out.
• This is arithmetic, not advice.

Questions people ask

How many work hours are in a year?

The standard full-time assumption is 2,080 hours: a 40-hour week worked across all 52 weeks of the year (40 × 52). That is the denominator behind almost every salary-to-hourly rule of thumb — a $52,000 salary is close to $25 an hour because $52,000 / 2,080 is exactly $25. Work fewer hours a week, or take unpaid weeks, and your own work year is smaller, which raises your hourly rate.

Is this before or after tax?

Before. Every number here is gross pay — what you earn before federal and state income tax, Social Security and Medicare are withheld. Your actual take-home is meaningfully lower. To convert a salary into the amount that lands in your account, use the take-home pay calculator, which applies the current brackets and FICA.

How do I convert an hourly wage to a salary?

Multiply the hourly wage by the hours you work in a year. At full time that is hours × weeks = 2,080, so $25.00 an hour becomes $25.00 × 2,080 = $52,000 a year. Switch the basis on the worksheet to Hourly wage, type your rate, and it runs this in reverse and fills in the monthly, weekly and biweekly figures too.

What is my rate if I work part-time or fewer weeks?

Lower the hours per week or the weeks worked and the hourly rate rises, because the same annual pay is spread over fewer hours. Take the default $75,000 salary but work only 26 weeks: the work year halves to 1,040 hours and the hourly rate doubles to $72.12. Unpaid time off works the same way — drop the weeks figure to match the weeks you are actually paid.

Does paid time off change my real hourly rate?

For a salaried worker, yes — in your favor. Your annual pay is fixed, but paid vacation and holidays are days you are paid for without working, so your rate on hours actually worked is higher than the headline. On the default $75,000 salary, 10 paid days off lift the effective rate from $36.06 to $37.50 an hour worked. For an hourly worker with no paid leave, the two rates are the same.