Salary to Hourly Calculator

The standard answer: divide by 2,080

Employers and job sites convert a salary to an hourly rate by dividing by 2,080 — 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. $40,000 a year is $19.23 an hour; $50,000 is $24.04; $60,000 is $28.85; $75,000 is $36.06; and $100,000 is $48.08.

The shortcut is to halve the salary in thousands: $60,000 is about $30 an hour. That treats the year as 2,000 hours and overstates the hourly rate by about 4%. The US federal government uses a slightly different divisor still, 2,087 hours, which averages in the extra day or two each calendar year has beyond 52 full weeks.

This figure is your paid hourly rate: the value of each hour you are paid for. It is the right number for things that are priced per paid hour, such as a leave payout.

Why 2,080 overstates the hours you work

The 2,080 hours include every paid day you do not work. A full-time US employee with 10 public holidays and 10 days of vacation is paid for 2,080 hours and works about 1,920 of them. In the UK, where most employees are entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday, the gap is wider still.

Divide the salary by the hours actually worked and the rate goes up. $60,000 with 15 days off is $60,000 ÷ 1,960 hours = $30.61 per hour worked, against $28.85 per paid hour. Enter your days off in the calculator, keep them marked as paid, and both figures appear.

Which one should you use? The per-hour-worked figure is the one to compare with hourly or contract work, where time off is usually unpaid. The 2,080 figure is the one most job adverts and pay scales quote.

Comparing a salaried offer with an hourly one

Suppose you are choosing between a salaried job at $65,000 with 20 paid days off and an hourly contract at $35 an hour with no paid time off. The salary works out at $31.25 per paid hour and $33.85 per hour actually worked. If you take the same 20 days off on the contract, unpaid, it pays $35 × 40 hours × 48 weeks = $67,200.

On cash alone, the contract is ahead by $2,200. But a salaried role usually carries benefits the hourly rate does not: employer health insurance, a retirement contribution, paid sick leave. A US contractor paid as self-employed also pays both halves of Social Security and Medicare — a self-employment tax of 15.3% — where an employer would cover half. Those items can outweigh the difference several times over, so price them in before deciding.

Long hours lower the real rate

A salary is the same however long the week runs. If the $65,000 job routinely takes 50 hours a week, its rate per hour worked over 48 working weeks falls to $65,000 ÷ 2,400 = $27.08 — below the hourly contract by a wide margin. Set the hours per week to what you actually work, not what the contract says, to see your real rate.

In the US, being paid a salary does not by itself mean you are exempt from overtime; exemption depends on both the salary level and the duties of the job. If you are non-exempt, hours over 40 must be paid at time and a half, and the overtime fields show what that adds.

Every other pay period, before tax

The table shows the same salary per day, week, bi-weekly paycheck, semi-monthly paycheck and month. On $60,000, a bi-weekly paycheck is $2,307.69 (26 a year) and a semi-monthly one is $2,500 (24 a year). All of it is gross pay, before income tax, Social Security, Medicare, retirement contributions and any other deductions.

To estimate take-home pay, use the salary calculator with the deduction percentage from your payslip.