Hourly to Salary Calculator
Turn an hourly rate into the numbers people actually compare jobs on: what lands each payday, what the year adds up to, and what every hour is really worth once overtime and unpaid weeks are counted.
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What this calculator works out
Give it a rate and your hours and it returns the same pay expressed six ways: weekly, every two weeks, twice a month, monthly, annually, and as an effective hourly rate once overtime and any bonus are spread over the hours you actually work.
The last of those is the one worth looking at twice. Someone earning $22 an hour with six hours of overtime a week is not earning $22 an hour in any meaningful sense — they are earning closer to $24, and that is the number to compare against a salaried offer.
Why 2,080 hours is the wrong shortcut
The usual conversion multiplies an hourly rate by 2,080 — forty hours across fifty-two weeks. It is a fine approximation and it breaks the moment anything real happens.
A 37.5-hour week gives 1,950 hours. Two unpaid weeks give 2,000. Seasonal work might give 1,400. Four hours of overtime a week adds 208 hours paid at a premium, which is worth more than 208 ordinary hours. None of that is unusual, and all of it moves the annual figure by thousands of dollars. This calculator takes hours, weeks, and unpaid time as inputs precisely so it does not have to guess.
Reading the pay periods
Biweekly and semimonthly are different schedules and they produce different paychecks. Biweekly means every fourteen days, which is 26 paydays a year. Semimonthly means twice a month, which is 24. The same annual pay divided 26 ways gives a smaller paycheck than the same pay divided 24 ways — and the biweekly schedule delivers two months a year with three paydays in them to make up the difference.
Monthly and semimonthly figures here divide the year, rather than multiplying a week by four. Four weeks is 28 days, and no month is 28 days except one, so the four-week shortcut understates monthly pay by roughly eight percent.
How the annual figure is built
Regular pay for a week is the rate times the scheduled hours. Overtime hours are priced at the rate times the multiplier and added. That weekly total is multiplied by the paid weeks — the weeks you entered, less any unpaid time — and any bonus is added at the end.
annual = (rate × hours + rate × multiplier × overtime hours) × paid weeks + bonus
The effective hourly rate then divides that annual figure by the hours genuinely worked, which is where the premium on overtime shows up as a higher number than the base rate.
A worked example
Take $28.50 an hour, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks, with four hours of overtime a week at time and a half, two unpaid weeks, and a $1,500 bonus.
Regular pay is $1,140 a week. Overtime is 4 × $42.75 = $171. That is $1,311 a week across 50 paid weeks, or $65,550, plus the bonus for $67,050 a year. Spread over the 2,200 hours actually worked, every hour is worth $30.48 — two dollars more than the headline rate.
Drop the overtime and the same job pays $57,000 before the bonus. The overtime is worth $8,550 a year, which is most of what separates one offer from another.
What this does not cover
- Anything after gross. No federal tax, Social Security, Medicare, state tax, health premium, or retirement contribution is deducted. Use the take-home pay calculator for what actually arrives.
- Whether you are owed overtime. Exempt employees are not entitled to it, several industries have their own rules, and some states require it after eight hours in a day rather than forty in a week.
- Irregular hours. The calculation assumes the same week repeated. Shift differentials, on-call pay, and seasonal overtime spikes need averaging by hand first.
- Tips and commission. Enter them in the bonus field if they are reasonably predictable, and treat the result as a range rather than a figure.
Going the other way? The salary to hourly calculator starts from an annual figure and works back. See our methodology for how these tools are built and tested.
Frequently asked questions
How much is $25 an hour per year?
At 40 hours a week for all 52 weeks, $25 an hour is $52,000 a year before deductions. Two unpaid weeks bring it to $50,000, and a 37.5-hour week brings it to $48,750.
That spread — nearly $3,000 between reasonable readings of the same wage — is why the hours and weeks are inputs here rather than assumptions.
Why is my biweekly pay smaller than half my monthly pay?
Because a fortnight is shorter than half a month. There are 26 biweekly periods in a year and 24 semimonthly ones, so each biweekly paycheck covers less time and is correspondingly smaller.
The gap comes back twice a year, in the two months that contain three biweekly paydays.
Should I include overtime when comparing against a salaried job?
Include it, but separate it. Overtime is real money and ignoring it undersells the hourly job — the annual figure with overtime is the honest comparison.
Just remember it is conditional. Overtime can be cut without a pay cut, and most salaried roles do not pay extra for the same additional hours. Look at both figures the calculator gives you: with overtime, and without.
Does the calculator handle a 37.5-hour or 32-hour week?
Yes — enter whatever your contract says. Hours per week is a plain input with no rounding to 40, so a 37.5-hour week or a four-day 32-hour week converts correctly.
Only hours above the overtime threshold in your jurisdiction should go in the overtime field; hours between 32 and 40 are ordinary hours at the ordinary rate.
What is the difference between my hourly wage and my effective hourly rate?
The wage is what you are paid for an ordinary hour. The effective rate is everything you earn in a year divided by every hour you worked for it, so overtime premiums and bonuses raise it above the wage.
It is the fairer number for comparing two jobs, and the one to use when deciding whether extra hours are worth taking.
Is unpaid time off the same as a pay cut?
For an hourly worker, yes, more or less. Two unpaid weeks reduce the year by two weeks of pay, which is why the calculator subtracts them from the paid weeks rather than treating them as a rounding error.
A salaried employee with the same two weeks off is paid the same either way. That difference is the single largest gap between hourly and salaried compensation at the same nominal rate.
Related calculators
This calculator is provided for general educational and estimation purposes only and is not financial, tax, or employment advice. It reports gross pay before any deduction. Whether overtime is owed at all depends on your job duties, your state, and federal law — see the U.S. Department of Labor for the rules that apply to you.