Hourly to Salary Converter

Comparing an hourly rate with a salary

Job offers arrive in incompatible units. One is $25 an hour, another is $52,000 a year, a third pays $2,000 every two weeks, and none of them is directly comparable until you convert. This tool converts in both directions and then shows the same pay in every period at once — yearly, monthly, twice a month, every two weeks and weekly — so an offer in one unit can be read against an offer in another.

A worked example: $25 an hour

At $25 an hour, 40 hours a week, 52 paid weeks a year, the annual figure is 25 × 40 × 52 = $52,000. From that one number the rest follows: $4,333.33 a month, $2,166.67 twice a month, $2,000.00 every two weeks, $1,000.00 a week, and $200.00 for a worked eight-hour day on a five-day week.

Now drop the paid weeks to 48 — four weeks of genuinely unpaid leave. The same $25 an hour is worth $48,000 a year, not $52,000. Run it the other way and it is starker: a $52,000 salary spread across 48 paid weeks of 40 hours is $27.08 an hour, because the salary keeps arriving during the weeks the hourly worker is not paid for.

The hours field carries as much weight as the rate

A rate on its own is half an offer. The same $25 an hour is a materially different job at 30 hours than at 45, and a lower rate on more hours regularly beats a higher rate on fewer — which stays invisible until both are converted to the same period.

The reverse reading is the one worth doing before accepting a salaried job, because a salary does not move when the hours do. $52,000 is $25 an hour across a 40-hour week, $22.22 across 45 hours and $20.00 across 50. Nothing has changed in that sentence except how long the job actually takes, and that is the one number no contract states.

The arithmetic, and why it is not symmetric

Hourly to annual is hourly × hours per week × paid weeks per year. Annual to hourly is annual ÷ (hours per week × paid weeks per year). Every period figure is then the annual amount divided by how many of that period fit in a year: 12 months, 24 semi-monthly pay dates, 26 biweekly pay dates, 52 weeks.

The two directions are only exact inverses when you use the same weeks-per-year figure for both, which is the trap. "Weeks per year" is the load-bearing input here: unpaid leave reduces annual pay for an hourly worker and does not reduce it for a salaried one, so the same 40-hour week can be worth two different annual figures depending on which side of the fence the job sits.

Twice a month is not every two weeks

These two are constantly confused and they are genuinely different pay structures.

• Semi-monthly means 24 pay dates a year, typically the 15th and the last day of the month. On $52,000 that is $2,166.67 each time.
• Biweekly means 26 pay dates a year, every second Friday. On $52,000 that is $2,000.00 each time — a smaller cheque, arriving more often.
• Biweekly also produces two months a year with three pay dates instead of two, which is why a biweekly budget built on "two cheques a month" leaves money unaccounted for twice a year.

What the conversion does not know

Every figure here is gross. Income tax, payroll tax, pension or 401(k) contributions, health premiums and student-loan deductions all sit between these numbers and your bank account, and they vary by country, state and personal circumstance far too much to guess at.