Hourly ↔ Annual
The conversion, and where overtime and unpaid weeks break it.
Multiply an hourly rate by 2,080 to get an annual salary. Divide an annual salary by 2,080 to get the hourly rate.
The quick mental version: halve the hourly rate and read it as thousands. $25 an hour is roughly $50k, $34 is roughly $68k. It is accurate to within about 4%.
Where 2,080 comes from, and what it assumes
Forty hours a week, fifty-two weeks a year. It is a convention rather than a measurement, and it embeds three assumptions that are often wrong.
Every week is paid. True for salaried employees, who are paid through holidays and leave. Not true for hourly workers without paid time off — two unpaid weeks turns 2,080 into 2,000 and $52,000 into $50,000.
No overtime. Where overtime is regular, the annual figure runs well above the conversion. Five overtime hours a week at time-and-a-half is worth 12.5% more time and about 19% more money.
Hours are actually forty. A salaried job that reliably runs fifty hours a week is paid for fifty and priced for forty. Converting it back at real hours worked is the only honest way to compare it with an hourly offer.
Pay frequency changes the cheque, not the year
Biweekly is every two weeks — 26 cheques, not 24. Twice a year a month contains three paydays, and budgeting monthly against two leaves those two months looking like a windfall when they are simply arithmetic.
Semi-monthly is twice a month on fixed dates — 24 cheques, with hours per cheque varying between 80 and 96 depending on the month.
Weekly is 52, most common in construction.
What arrives is not what is quoted
Federal income tax, Social Security at 6.2%, Medicare at 1.45%, and state income tax where it applies. On $52,000 that is roughly $8,000 to $11,000, leaving $41,000 to $44,000 before any health premium or retirement contribution.
Nine states levy no income tax, which is worth up to about $2,600 a year at that income — real, and usually smaller than the housing difference between the places being compared.
5 articles
$30 an Hour Is $62,400 a Year — About $49,000 After TaxSixty-two thousand four hundred. It is roughly the national mean for a carpenter, and comfortably above it for a roofer or a painter.
How Overtime Pay Is Calculated: 1.5× Over 40 Hours in a WeekTime and a half over forty hours in a week — federal law. The part that catches people is what counts as the regular rate, because it is not always the hourly rate on the offer.
How to Convert Salary to Hourly Rate: Divide by 2,080 — Then Divide by Real HoursDivide by 2,080 and you get the advertised hourly equivalent. Divide by the hours actually worked and you get the real one, and the two are rarely close.
$25 an Hour Is $52,000 a Year — Before Anything Comes Out of ItMultiply by 2,080 and you get $52,000. That number assumes forty hours a week, fifty-two weeks a year, and no unpaid day off — three assumptions worth pricing.
$20 an Hour Is $41,600 a Year — and About $34,000 After TaxForty-one thousand six hundred before anything comes out of it. The useful number is the one after tax, and it is roughly a fifth lower.