HourlyTallyWhat each job pays per hour, per year, and in your metro.

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.

13 articles

$42.50 an hour at 35 hours a week is how much a year?

$42.5/hour at 35 hours a week
$77,350a year, before tax
$6,446 a month · $2,975 every two weeks · $1,488 a week
$42.5 an hour × 35 hours a week$77,350Paid 52 weekssalaried, or paid leave$71,400Paid 48 weeks2 weeks off + holidays, unpaidUnpaid time off costs $5,950 a year — the gap every "× 52" calculator hides.
A year42.5/hour × 35 hours × 52 weeks$77,350
A monthannual ÷ 12, not four weeks of pay$6,446
Every two weeks26 paychecks a year$2,975
A week$1,488
A day7 hours a day over five days$298
Hours worked a year35 × 521,820
If unpaid time off48 paid weeks — $5,950 less than the headline figure$71,400
Same rate at 40 hours$11,050 more a year$88,400

Notes

  • $42.5 an hour at 35 hours a week is $77,350 a year before tax. The arithmetic is 42.5 × 35 × 52 — and the 52 is where most of the disagreement between calculators comes from.
  • The 52 assumes you are paid for every week of the year. Salaried work usually is; hourly work often is not. Take two weeks of vacation and ten public holidays with no paid leave and you are paid for 48 weeks, which makes the real figure $71,400 — $5,950 lower. Neither number is wrong; they answer different questions, and which one applies to you is written in your offer letter, not in a calculator.
  • A month is not four weeks. Four weekly paychecks is $5,950, but a year has 52 weeks rather than 48, so the true monthly average is $6,446. Paid every two weeks you get 26 cheques, and twice a year that means three cheques in one calendar month — the two months that make a budget look wrong in both directions.
  • Overtime starts past 40 hours in a week, not past 80 in a fortnight, and it is paid at one and a half times the rate for non-exempt workers. At 35 hours there is none, but a single busy week crossing 40 triggers it.
  • Before tax is roughly 22% above what lands, depending on the state. Federal income tax, Social Security at 6.2% and Medicare at 1.45% come out of every cheque regardless of where you live; state income tax swings the rest, from nothing in nine states to over 9% at the top in California and Oregon.

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