How to Use This Calculator
- 1
Pick a conversion direction
Choose Salary → Hourly if you know your annual pay and want the per-hour equivalent, or Hourly → Salary to project what an hourly rate adds up to over a year.
- 2
Enter your pay
Type your gross annual salary or hourly wage — the amount before taxes and deductions, which is how job offers are quoted.
- 3
Set your hours per week
The default of 40 fits most full-time roles. If you regularly put in 45 or 50 hours, entering your real hours reveals what each of them actually earns you.
- 4
Adjust weeks worked per year
Keep 52 if you receive paid vacation, since you're paid for those weeks either way. Drop to 50 or 48 only for unpaid time off, which shrinks the hours your salary is spread across.
- 5
Compare the full breakdown
Read the hourly, weekly, biweekly, monthly, and annual figures side by side — handy for matching a paycheck to its pay period or lining up two offers quoted differently.
How It Works
The conversion divides annual pay by the total hours worked in a year. First multiply hours per week by weeks worked per year to get annual hours, then divide:
Going the other way, an hourly rate times weekly hours times weeks per year gives the annual salary. At 40 hours a week and 52 weeks, a year contains 2,080 working hours — the convention U.S. HR departments and government agencies use for full-time pay math. Weekly pay is the hourly rate × weekly hours, biweekly is double that, and monthly is the annual figure divided by 12.
Worked example
Take a $60,000 salary at 40 hours per week for 52 weeks. That's 40 × 52 = 2,080 working hours in the year.
60,000 ÷ 2,080 = $28.85 per hour. The same salary works out to $1,153.85 per week, $2,307.69 per biweekly paycheck, and $5,000 per month.
Notice how sensitive the result is to hours: the same $60,000 earned over 50-hour weeks drops the effective rate to about $23.08 an hour.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much is $60,000 a year per hour?
At a standard 40-hour week worked 52 weeks a year (2,080 hours), $60,000 comes out to $28.85 per hour before taxes. That's $1,153.85 a week or $5,000 a month. If you actually average 45 hours a week, the effective rate falls to about $25.64 — a good reality check when a salaried role expects long hours.
What does $75,000 a year work out to hourly?
Dividing $75,000 by 2,080 full-time hours gives $36.06 per hour gross. Per pay period that's roughly $1,442 weekly, $2,885 biweekly, or $6,250 monthly. Many people use $36/hour as the quick mental benchmark: every $2,080 of salary equals about $1 of hourly wage.
Does this calculator account for taxes?
No — every figure here is gross pay, the pre-tax number quoted in offer letters. Your take-home will be lower after federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare (7.65% combined for employees), any state income tax, and deductions like health premiums or 401(k) contributions. Depending on your state and bracket, expect roughly 20–30% less in your actual paycheck.
How do vacation and unpaid time off change the math?
Paid time off changes nothing — you earn your salary during those weeks, so keep weeks per year at 52. Unpaid time off is different: it shrinks the hours your pay is spread over. A $60,000 salary with two unpaid weeks means 2,000 hours instead of 2,080, nudging the effective rate up to $30.00 — but you're still taking home the same total.
Why do salaried employees often not get overtime pay?
Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employees classified as exempt — typically salaried workers in executive, administrative, or professional roles above a pay threshold — aren't owed time-and-a-half past 40 hours. Non-exempt (usually hourly) workers are. That's exactly why converting your salary to an hourly rate matters: unpaid extra hours quietly dilute what each hour of your time earns.
Where does the 2,080-hour year come from?
It's simply 40 hours × 52 weeks, the standard full-time schedule in the U.S. Payroll systems, government pay scales, and HR benchmarks all lean on it, which is why annual salaries divide so cleanly: $52,000 is exactly $25/hour, and $104,000 is $50/hour. Some employers use 2,087 hours to average out leap years, but the difference is pennies.
Should I charge more as a freelancer than my old hourly wage?
Yes, meaningfully more. An employee's wage comes bundled with employer-paid benefits: health insurance, the employer half of Social Security and Medicare, paid leave, and retirement matching. As a freelancer you cover all of that plus self-employment tax and unbillable admin time. A common starting point is your employee-equivalent hourly rate plus 25–30% — so a $28.85 wage suggests quoting at least $36–38 an hour.