United States · Pay conversion

Salary to hourly calculator

Comparing a salaried offer with an hourly one means putting both in the same unit. The standard yardstick is the 2,080-hour year — 40 hours a week times 52 weeks — so a $52,000 salary equals $25 an hour. This converter runs in both directions — salary to hourly, and hourly to salary — and lets you replace the standard schedule with your own hours per week and weeks per year, because a 37.5-hour week or a part-time schedule changes the answer.

Where the 2,080-hour year comes from

The 2,080 figure is nothing more mysterious than a full-time schedule multiplied out: 40 hours a week × 52 weeks = 2,080 hours. Payroll practice uses it because it makes salaries and hourly rates directly comparable — divide any annual salary by 2,080 and you have the hourly equivalent on a standard schedule; multiply any hourly rate by 2,080 and you have the annual equivalent. That is why $15 an hour and $31,200 a year describe the same pay, and why a $100,000 salary works out to just over $48 an hour ($48.08) rather than the rounder number people often guess. The convention assumes the schedule underneath it; change the schedule and the honest equivalent changes with it, which the next sections quantify.

Worked examples, both directions

Salary to hourly: $75,000 a year on a 37.5-hour week (a common public-sector and healthcare schedule) spreads over 37.5 × 52 = 1,950 hours, giving $38.46 an hour — noticeably more than the $36.06 the same salary yields on a 40-hour week, because the same money buys fewer hours. Hourly to salary: $20 an hour on a half-time 20-hour week is not "about $40,000" — it is 20 × 20 × 52 = $20,800 a year, $400 a week. And a seasonal example: $100,000 paid over 50 working weeks of the year is $50.00 an hour on the weeks actually worked, not $48.08. Each of these is one of the tested scenarios behind this page; the converter reproduces them exactly.

When to change the hours or weeks

Keep 40 and 52 for a standard full-time job — including one with paid holidays and paid vacation, because those weeks are still paid, so the salary still spreads across 52 weeks. Change the hours when the actual schedule differs: 37.5-hour weeks, compressed schedules, or part-time work like the 20-hour example above. Change the weeks only when some weeks are genuinely unpaid — a school-year contract paid over the weeks worked, unpaid seasonal layoff weeks, or a planned unpaid sabbatical. What you should not do is lower the weeks to make a rate look better when comparing offers: compare both offers on the same schedule, or the comparison stops meaning anything. Note also what this tool deliberately leaves out — overtime. An hourly job at 45 hours a week pays more than its base conversion because of the overtime premium; if that is your situation, the overtime calculator does that maths with the premium shown separately.

A conversion is not a legal classification

One caution matters more than the arithmetic. Converting a salary into an hourly figure does not make an employee "hourly" in law, and being paid a salary does not by itself make anyone exempt from overtime. Under the FLSA, overtime rights turn on the Act's exemption tests — the duties actually performed and how the pay is structured — not on which unit a calculator displays. The federal minimum wage floor is $7.25 an hour, and where state law sets a higher standard, the higher one governs. If your real question is "should I be getting overtime on this salary?", the converter gives you the regular-rate starting point, and the overtime calculator's salaried mode takes it from there.

Common questions

How many working hours are in a year?

2,080 on the standard full-time convention (40 × 52). On a 37.5-hour week it is 1,950; on a 35-hour week, 1,820. Your figure is simply your weekly hours multiplied by the weeks you are paid for.

Should I subtract holidays and vacation from the 52 weeks?

Not if they are paid. A salary covers paid time off, so the annual amount is still spread over 52 weeks. Subtract only weeks that are genuinely unpaid.

Is $50 an hour a $100,000 salary?

Close but not exact: $50 × 2,080 = $104,000. A $100,000 salary is $48.08 an hour on the standard schedule — and exactly $50.00 an hour if it is paid over 50 working weeks.

Does this show take-home pay?

No — every figure here is gross pay, before income tax, Social Security and Medicare withholding and any deductions. Gross-to-gross is the only honest way to compare two offers.

Image credits

The desk-with-calculator photograph is via Wikimedia Commons, license CC0 (author recorded as AnonymousUnknown author in the Commons record). The calculator-on-documents photograph is by Steve Buissinne, via Wikimedia Commons, license CC0. The coins-and-savings-jar photograph is by nattanan, via Wikimedia Commons, license CC0. All three were already in this site's licensed collection; all were converted to WebP and resized. No image on this page was generated by AI.

Sources

• U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division — FLSA overview: minimum wage and the higher-of-two-standards rule (dol.gov/agencies/whd/flsa)
• U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division — Overtime (dol.gov/agencies/whd/overtime)

The 2,080-hour convention is arithmetic (40 × 52), not a legal rule; the converter's hours and weeks inputs exist so the convention can be matched to a real schedule. Expected outputs were derived independently of the code and the engine is tested against them.