Hourly to annual salary calculator

Convert an hourly wage to an annual salary using the standard 2,080-hour year — then flip it around to see your true hourly rate once paid time off is taken out.

How the math works

Converting an hourly wage to a salary is one multiplication. Your rate times the hours you work each week times the weeks you work each year.

A full-time schedule is 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, which is 2,080 hours. That is the figure federal agencies and payroll systems use, and it is where the round conversions come from: multiply any hourly rate by 2,080 and you have the salary. At $25.00 an hour that is $52,000 a year.

The second mode runs the calculation backwards. Given a fixed annual salary, it divides by the hours you actually work — scheduled hours minus paid time off — to show your true hourly rate:

The 2,080-hour figure counts hours you are paid for, not hours you spend working. For a salaried worker those are different numbers, and the gap is worth real money per hour.

Worked example

Start at the floor. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and has been since July 2009. Full-time at 2,080 hours, that is $15,080 a year before tax — the multiplication, nothing hidden.

Now the median. A full-time, year-round worker earns $59,540 at the middle of the U.S. distribution. Run that backwards through 2,080 hours and the equivalent wage is $28.63 an hour. That is the number a job posting would quote.

But that same worker gets paid time off. Private-industry workers average 10 paid vacation days after a year on the job and 8 paid holidays — call it 18 days, or 144 hours, of pay for no work. Subtract those and the salary is really covering 1,936 hours of actual work. Divide $59,540 by 1,936 and the true rate is $30.75 an hour. The paid days off are worth about $2.13 on every hour actually worked — roughly a 7% raise the hourly-conversion number never shows.

When this calculator is wrong

The plain conversion answers a narrow question — what a rate annualizes to at 2,080 hours — and quietly assumes several things that often are not true.

• It confuses paid hours with worked hours. For a salaried worker, 2,080 is the hours you are paid for. The hours you work are fewer, because paid vacation and holidays are still paid. That is why the true hourly rate is higher than salary-divided-by-2,080, and why the second mode above exists.
• It assumes every scheduled week is paid. An hourly worker with no paid time off does not get 2,080 paid hours. Take those same 18 days off unpaid and the year is 1,936 paid hours, not 2,080. At $28.63 an hour that is about $4,123 the plain conversion overstates. For hourly work with no benefits, 2,080 is a ceiling, not a plan.
• It is a gross number, not take-home. Federal income tax, Social Security, and Medicare come out before the money lands in your account, and none of that is in the multiplication. The gap between gross salary and the paycheck is a separate calculation.
• Overtime and irregular hours break the flat rate. Non-exempt work above 40 hours is paid at time-and-a-half, so a rate applied to a flat 40 understates a heavy-overtime year and overstates a slow one.

What to do with the result

If you are comparing an hourly offer against a salaried one, do not compare the hourly rate to the salary directly. Convert the salary to its true hourly rate first — divide by hours actually worked, not 2,080 — because the salaried job's paid time off is part of the pay. A $28.63-an-hour salary is really $30.75 of work once its 18 paid days are counted; an hourly job with no paid days off has to clear that higher bar to match, not the posted rate.

If the job is hourly with no benefits, plan against paid hours, not scheduled hours. Decide how many days you will realistically take unpaid across a year, enter them above, and budget from that annual figure rather than the round 2,080-hour one.

Common questions

How many work hours are in a year?

The standard full-time figure is 2,080 hours — 40 hours a week times 52 weeks. Payroll systems and federal pay tables use it to turn an hourly rate into a salary. It counts paid hours, so a salaried worker's actual hours at work are lower once vacation and holidays are removed.

What is $25 an hour annually?

At 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, $25.00 an hour is $52,000 a year before tax. That is 2,080 hours times $25.00. Take-home is lower after federal tax, Social Security, and Medicare.

Is 2,080 hours right for everyone?

No. It fits a full-time, year-round schedule with no unpaid time off. Part-time work, a compressed schedule, or unpaid weeks all change the hours, and the calculator lets you edit hours per week, weeks per year, and days off to match.

Does the annual figure include paid time off?

For a salaried worker, yes — paid vacation and holidays are part of the salary. For an hourly worker, only if the employer pays for that time. Many hourly jobs do not, which is why unpaid days off lower the real annual pay.

What is the difference between gross and take-home?

Gross is the multiplication result — rate times hours. Take-home is what remains after federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, and any state tax. On a middle income the two differ by roughly a fifth to a quarter.