Hourly to Salary Calculator - And Salary to Hourly

The formulas

Annual salary = hourly rate × hours per week × paid weeks per year. Hourly rate = annual salary ÷ (hours per week × paid weeks per year). For a standard full-time job, hours per week is 40 and paid weeks is 52, which gives the number every HR department uses: 2,080 hours a year.

From the annual figure, everything else is division: ÷ 12 for monthly, ÷ 26 for a biweekly paycheck, ÷ 24 for a semimonthly paycheck, ÷ 52 for weekly. The calculator shows all of them at once so you can compare against a pay stub or an offer letter in whatever format it uses.

Worked examples

Hourly to salary: $25 an hour at 40 hours a week for 52 weeks is $25 × 2,080 = $52,000 a year. That is $4,333.33 a month, $2,000 per biweekly check, $2,166.67 per semimonthly check, and $1,000 a week.

Salary to hourly: a $75,000 offer divided by 2,080 hours is $36.06 an hour. But if the role realistically runs 50 hours a week, divide by 2,600 instead: $28.85 an hour. That is how an hourly job at $32 can pay better per hour than a salary that looks bigger.

The quick mental conversion is to double the hourly rate and add three zeros. $25 an hour becomes roughly $50,000, $40 becomes roughly $80,000. It underestimates by 4% (2,080 vs 2,000 hours), which makes it a safe, conservative number for budgeting.

52 weeks or fewer?

Salaried employees are paid for holidays and vacation, so 52 weeks is correct. Many full-time hourly employees also get paid time off, so 52 works for them too.

If you are hourly without paid time off, or a freelancer or contractor, use the weeks you actually bill. Two weeks of unpaid vacation and holidays means 50 weeks: $25 an hour becomes $50,000, not $52,000. Freelancers often plan on 46 to 48 billable weeks and fewer than 40 billable hours a week once admin, sales, and gaps between projects are counted.

Biweekly vs semimonthly, and the three-paycheck months

Biweekly means every other week, 26 paychecks a year. Because 26 does not divide evenly into 12 months, two months each year have three paydays. Budgeting on two checks a month and treating the extra two as savings is a popular trick for a reason.

Semimonthly means twice a month on fixed dates, 24 paychecks a year. Each check is larger ($2,166.67 vs $2,000 on $52,000) but there are fewer of them. The annual pay is identical.

What the number does not include

These are gross figures. Federal income tax, Social Security (6.2%), Medicare (1.45%), state and local taxes, and pre-tax deductions like 401(k) contributions and health premiums all come out before your deposit. Take-home pay is commonly 70% to 80% of gross for a single filer; the paycheck calculator estimates it properly.

Overtime is not included either. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, non-exempt employees must get at least 1.5 times their regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek. Five overtime hours a week at $25 base adds $187.50 a week, about $9,750 a year.

Benefits are a real part of compensation. Employer health insurance, 401(k) matches, and paid leave are commonly worth 20% to 30% on top of wages. When comparing a salaried job with benefits to a contract rate without them, contractors typically need 1.25 to 1.5 times the equivalent hourly wage to come out even.

Common mistakes

Comparing a salary to an hourly rate at different hours. Always convert both at the hours you will actually work.

Forgetting the federal minimum. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour ($15,080 a year full time), but more than half the states set a higher one. Check your state before evaluating a low offer.

Mixing up monthly and biweekly. A monthly figure of $4,333 is not the same as two biweekly checks of $2,000. The difference is those two extra paychecks a year.