Hourly to Salary Calculator

How the Hourly to Salary Calculator: Convert Wage to Annual Pay Works

Job offers are not always presented the same way: one may quote an hourly wage, another an annual salary, and comparing them means converting one into the other. This hourly to salary calculator converts either direction, using your actual hours per week and paid weeks per year, and estimates the after-tax value so you can compare offers on equal footing.

Enter your hourly rate or salary, hours per week, and paid weeks per year, then choose which direction to convert.

The standard conversion

A full-time worker with 40 hours a week and 52 paid weeks a year works 2,080 hours annually. The common shortcut for converting an hourly rate to a rough annual salary is to multiply by 2,000 for quick mental math, or more precisely by 2,080. So $25 an hour is about $52,000 a year at 2,080 hours, and a $52,000 salary is about $25 an hour at the same schedule.

This shortcut breaks down quickly once your schedule isn't a standard 40-hour, 52-week year. Part-time hours, unpaid leave, seasonal layoffs, or a compressed workweek all change the true hourly-to-annual relationship, which is why this calculator lets you set your own hours and paid weeks.

Why paid weeks matter

If you take two weeks of unpaid leave a year, you're paid for 50 weeks, not 52, so your effective annual pay from an hourly rate is about 4% lower than the simple 2,080-hour shortcut suggests. Seasonal and part-year workers, such as those in education, agriculture or tourism, may only be paid for 30 to 40 weeks a year, which makes a big difference between the hourly rate and the annual total.

Conversely, if you're comparing a salaried offer to an hourly one, remember that a salary is usually paid consistently for 52 weeks regardless of actual hours worked in a given week, including paid holidays and vacation baked into the annual figure, while an hourly worker is typically paid only for hours actually worked unless PTO is separately provided.

Salaried non-exempt workers and overtime

If you're comparing an hourly job that pays overtime with a salaried job that does not (because it's exempt from FLSA overtime rules), the comparison is not just about the base rate. A salaried exempt worker who regularly works 45 hours a week is effectively earning a lower hourly rate for those extra hours than an hourly worker earning overtime pay for the same hours.

When comparing offers, ask about typical weekly hours for the salaried role, and use the overtime pay calculator on this site to see what an hourly-with-overtime alternative would be worth for the same total hours.

Converting for a job posting or negotiation

Job postings increasingly must disclose pay ranges, sometimes as an hourly rate and sometimes as an annual salary depending on state pay transparency laws. When negotiating, convert whichever figure you're given into the format you think in most naturally, so you're comparing apples to apples against your current pay or other offers, and don't let a headline number in one format make an offer look better or worse than it really is.

If a recruiter quotes a range like '$28 to $32 an hour,' converting it to roughly $58,000 to $67,000 a year at full-time hours can make it easier to compare directly against a competing salaried offer.

Part-time and multiple job scenarios

If you work part-time or hold more than one job, this calculator's hours and weeks fields let you model your actual schedule rather than a default full-time year. For example, 25 hours a week for 50 paid weeks a year is 1,250 hours, notably less than the 2,080-hour full-time standard, so the same hourly rate produces a much smaller annual figure than the quick full-time shortcut would suggest.

If you're combining income from two part-time jobs, calculate each separately and add the annual salary results together, then use the multiple jobs paycheck calculator on this site to see the combined tax effect, since having two employers changes how federal withholding interacts with your total income.

Holidays, PTO and unpaid leave

Salaried employees are usually paid the same amount every pay period regardless of company holidays or approved vacation, because paid time off is built into the annual salary figure. Hourly employees are typically paid only for hours actually worked unless the employer separately provides paid holidays or PTO, in which case those paid hours should be added to your worked hours for the year.

If your hourly job offers, say, 6 paid holidays and 10 days of PTO, that's about 128 additional paid hours a year beyond hours you actually work, which you should include in the hours field here to get an accurate annual comparison against a salaried offer that already assumes paid time off.

Adjusting for irregular schedules

Shift workers, especially in healthcare, manufacturing and hospitality, often work variable schedules that don't fit a clean 40-hour week, such as three 12-hour shifts one week and four the next. To convert accurately, calculate your actual average hours per week over a representative period, rather than assuming a flat 40, since averaging an irregular schedule into this calculator gives a more realistic annual and hourly comparison than using a single typical week.

Similarly, seasonal workers with predictable busy and slow periods, such as retail during the holidays or landscaping in summer, should estimate a weighted average across the full year rather than using their peak-season hours, which would overstate their true annual equivalent.

Using this alongside a full compensation comparison

Pay isn't the only variable in comparing jobs. Once you've converted hourly and salaried offers to the same basis using this calculator, layer in commute time and cost, schedule flexibility and predictability, career growth potential, and the value of benefits like health insurance, retirement matching and paid leave. A slightly lower converted hourly-equivalent rate at a job with excellent benefits and a short commute can easily be the better overall choice, even though the raw number looks smaller side by side.

Keep a simple worksheet listing the after-tax pay estimate from this calculator alongside these other factors when comparing more than two offers, since it's easy to over-focus on the headline pay number when the numbers are presented in different formats.

Worked example

Converting $25 an hour at 40 hours a week for all 52 weeks: annual gross is $52,000. At a $65,000 salary with the same 2,080-hour year, the equivalent hourly rate is about $31.25. If the $65,000 role requires a lot of unpaid overtime, say averaging 45 hours a week (2,340 hours a year), the effective rate drops to about $27.78 an hour, closer to the $25 hourly offer than the sticker salary suggests.

This is why total expected hours matter as much as the headline number when comparing a salaried offer with an hourly one.

Benefits are part of the real comparison

A lower salary with strong benefits, such as a generous 401(k) match, full health insurance coverage, and paid time off, can be worth more in total compensation than a higher hourly wage with no benefits. When comparing offers, estimate the dollar value of health insurance premiums covered by the employer, retirement matching, and paid leave, and add that to the after-tax pay estimate from this calculator for a fuller picture.

See the pay raise calculator and salary after tax calculator on this site for related comparisons.

Hourly to Salary results at a glance

These are the calculator's results at different values of hourly rate, with every other input left at the example values above (the bold row is the example). Use them to see how quickly the result changes before entering your own numbers.

How convert changes the result

The same example with each convert option:

How filing status changes the result

The same example with each filing status option:

The same example at different state tax rates

State income tax is the input that varies most between readers. Nine states charge 0% on wages, flat-tax states charge one rate, and progressive states charge more at higher incomes. Here is the example at five effective state rates; for your exact state rules, use the state paycheck calculators.

Hourly-to-salary quick reference

The last column assumes two unpaid weeks a year, a common situation for hourly workers without paid vacation. For a quick mental estimate, double the hourly rate and add three zeros: $20 an hour is roughly $40,000 a year.