Hourly to Salary Calculator

How it works

Converting an hourly wage to a salary is simple multiplication. What trips people up is the number of weeks they are actually paid for. The annual figure is your rate times the hours you work each week times the weeks you work in a year:

With the defaults above, $25 an hour at 40 hours a week for all 52 weeks is $52,000 a year, or $1,000 a week. Drop to 50 paid weeks because you take two weeks unpaid, and the same rate becomes $50,000.

That $50,000 is gross pay, the salary your employer reports before payroll deductions. Income tax and benefits come out of every paycheck after that, so your take-home pay is smaller.

✓ Every result is checked against independent reference math. See how we test the calculators →

How to use this calculator

1. Enter your hourly rate exactly as it appears on your offer letter or pay stub.
2. Set hours per week to the hours you are actually paid for, leaving out unpaid meal breaks.
3. Enter the weeks per year you are paid, using 52 only if none of your time off is unpaid.
4. Read the weekly, monthly, and annual salary it returns, and treat all three as gross pay.
5. Change one input at a time, such as cutting two weeks or adding hours, to see what each is worth.

A worked example: $25 an hour, 40 hours a week

Say you just got offered $25.00 an hour for a 40 hour week, and you want to know what that looks like as a yearly number. Worked across all 52 weeks, that hourly rate lands at $52,000 a year before tax.

The weekly math is the anchor: 40 hours at $25 is $1,000 a week. Double it for a biweekly check of $2,000, and the monthly figure smooths out to $4,333. None of that touches taxes or deductions, so treat it as your gross starting point.

Hours off the clock change the picture fast. Work only 40 weeks of the year, like a school term schedule, and the same rate brings in $40,000 instead, a gap of $12,000. Swap in your own rate and weeks to see where you land.

What does the yearly figure leave out?

This calculator does straight multiplication. Real employment rarely works out that evenly, so check these five things before you treat the number as settled.

• Paid weeks are rarely 52: unpaid leave, seasonal employment, and gaps between contract jobs all shorten the year, so enter the weeks you are actually paid.
• Unpaid breaks: many employers do not pay for meal breaks, which leaves your paid work hours below the hours you spend at the job.
• This is gross pay: income tax, payroll withholding, and insurance premiums come out before the money reaches your paycheck, often 20% to 30% of the total.
• Benefits are worth real money: health coverage, retirement matching, and paid time off can add thousands a year that no hourly wage shows.
• Extra pay is not in the rate: overtime, holiday pay, and shift premiums are paid on top, so a steady overtime schedule puts your true salary above this figure.

What is the quick way to estimate a salary in your head?

You can convert between an hourly wage and an annual salary without a calculator. The shortcut assumes a 40-hour week, which adds up to about 2,000 paid hours a year.

• Hourly to salary: double the rate and add three zeros, so $25 an hour becomes roughly $50,000 a year. The shortcut assumes 2,000 hours, or 50 weeks, so it slightly understates a full 52-week year.
• Salary to hourly: reverse it. Drop three zeros and halve the result, so a $60,000 salary works out to about $30 an hour. You can also start from an annual salary instead and get the exact wage.

That shortcut is close enough to compare two job offers on the spot. When the details matter, use the calculator above. Your actual hours per week and paid weeks per year change the salary more than any shortcut allows for.

Why is your take-home smaller than your salary?

The salary this calculator reports is gross income, the figure before anything is withheld. Payroll then subtracts several amounts before the money reaches your account.

• Federal income tax: usually the largest deduction. The IRS charges higher rates on higher earnings rather than one flat rate on the whole salary.
• State and local tax: applies in most places. That is why the same salary can leave two employees with different take-home pay.
• Payroll tax: funds Social Security and Medicare. The Social Security Administration sets out what those contributions pay for later on.
• Retirement contributions: money you put into a 401(k) plan usually comes out before tax, which lowers the tax bill and the paycheck at the same time.
• Health insurance: your share of the premium comes out of every paycheck, while the employer's share never appears in the salary at all.

Together, these deductions commonly leave take-home pay at roughly 70% to 80% of gross. The exact share depends on where you live and how much of your wage goes toward retirement and benefits.

Hourly and salaried jobs are not the same

Two jobs can convert to the same annual salary and still be very different to live on. So look past the yearly figure and check what the employment type itself changes.

• Overtime: hourly employees are normally paid extra past 40 hours a week. Many salaried roles are not, so the hourly job can end up paying more. A separate calculator shows what those extra hours add.
• Exempt or not: the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) decides who must be paid overtime, and a job title alone does not settle it.
• Steady pay: a salary is the same in a slow week, while hourly wages follow the schedule and fall when an employer cuts hours.
• Leave and benefits: retirement matching and paid parental leave are often stronger in salaried employment, and they rarely show up in a rate-to-rate comparison.
• Minimum wage: no hourly rate may fall below the minimum set by law. The U.S. Department of Labor publishes the federal and state figures.

Put both offers in annual terms first. Then adjust for these differences before deciding which employer really pays more.

How does a contract rate compare to a salary?

A contract rate and an employee wage are not directly comparable. The same hourly number is worth less when you work for yourself, because you now pay costs the employer used to cover.

• The whole payroll tax: an employee splits it with the employer, while someone self-employed pays both halves out of the same rate.
• No paid leave: a day you do not work is a day you do not bill. That makes the weeks per year input matter far more than it does for salaried employment.
• You buy your own benefits: health cover and retirement saving come out of your own wage, with no employer contribution behind them.
• Gaps between jobs: few contractors bill all 52 weeks, and the time spent finding the next client is unpaid.

So a contract rate has to be well above an employee wage to match it. Run both through the calculator with honest paid weeks, and you get a real comparison instead of a guess.

How does payroll turn your rate into a paycheck?

No employer pays a year at a time. Payroll runs on a cycle, so the annual salary from this calculator is split into equal checks before any of it reaches you.

Most organizations pay every two weeks or twice a month, and those schedules are not the same. A check every other week is smaller than a check paid twice a month, because there are more of them in the year.

That cycle runs on payroll software. Larger organizations buy it inside a human capital management (HCM) suite on a subscription. The HCM system stores your wage, your work hours, and every deduction.

HR and payroll usually share that system. Workforce management tools feed it hours from a time clock or a scheduling app, and the same technology handles schedule optimization across the workforce.

Small businesses often skip all of it and run payroll in a spreadsheet. Either way, the maths is the one on this page, applied to your rate and your hours. If a paycheck does not match, HR is who traces it.

What decides an hourly rate in the first place?

This calculator takes your rate as given. It helps to know what set that rate, and pay comes from two things: the labor market, and what the business can afford.

• The going rate: employers check the median wage for the same job in the same area before they post it, and so should you.
• Skill and experience: a licence, years of experience, or specialist knowledge such as software development lifts an hourly wage well above that median.
• Work conditions: night shifts, weekends, and hazardous jobs usually carry a premium, because pay is the simplest motivation an employer has to fill them.
• Competition for staff: this is plain economics, and when employers bid against each other, hourly wages move faster than salaries do.
• What the company can afford: wages are the largest cost in many companies, so management sets a team budget before any single rate is agreed.

Inflation and the state of the job market affect every one of those factors, which is where macroeconomics comes in. Companies hiring from a global workforce also compare rates across countries, and technology jobs are the clearest example.

Every role is priced this way, from a first shift to the CEO. That knowledge is what turns your salary into something you can negotiate rather than accept.

A worked example: two offers side by side

Say you are weighing a $28-an-hour job against a salaried role advertised at $56,000. The salary looks higher at first, but you have to convert the hourly wage before you can tell.

• The hourly job: at 40 hours a week for all 52 weeks is $28 times 40 times 52, or $58,240 a year, already ahead of the salary.
• Two unpaid weeks: drop it to $28 times 40 times 50, or $56,000, exactly level with the salaried offer.
• Overtime: would put the hourly job ahead again, since a salaried employee is paid the same whatever the hours.

So two questions decide it. Does the hourly job pay overtime, and which employer offers better benefits and paid time off? Put your own rate, hours, and paid weeks into the calculator above to see where your two offers land.