How to Convert Salary to Hourly Pay (and Hourly to Salary), With Worked Examples

One job posts a salary and the other posts an hourly rate. Here is how to put them on the same scale, including the hours most quick conversions leave out.

How do you convert a salary to an hourly rate?

To convert a salary to an hourly rate, divide the yearly salary by the hours you're paid for in a year. For a full-time job at 40 hours a week, that's 2,080 hours, so a $52,000 salary works out to $25 an hour. To go the other way, multiply the hourly rate by 2,080.

That's the standard answer, and it's the right place to start. But the result only tells you what each paid hour is worth if you really work 40 hours a week, every week, and get paid for all 52 of them. Many people don't. Hourly workers may take unpaid time off, and salaried workers may work 50-hour weeks for the same pay.

This guide is for anyone comparing job offers, weighing a raise, or trying to figure out what their time is worth. It walks through the basic conversions, then the adjustments that make the numbers honest. All figures here are gross pay, meaning before taxes and deductions. Our guide to reading a pay stub explains how gross pay turns into take-home pay.

Where the 2,080-hour number comes from

A full-time schedule of 40 hours a week for 52 weeks equals 40 × 52 = 2,080 hours. That's the number most people and most quick calculators use.

The federal government uses a slightly different figure for its own workers. The Office of Personnel Management computes hourly rates of basic pay by dividing an employee's annual rate by 2,087 hours. That number comes from a 1981 government study that looked at a 28-year period. Because a year is 52 weeks plus a day or two, some years contain more workdays than others, and 2,087 is the long-run average. For a $52,000 salary, $52,000 ÷ 2,087 = about $24.92 an hour, eight cents less than the 2,080-hour answer.

For everyday comparisons, 2,080 is fine. The point of the 2,087 figure is a reminder that the calendar isn't perfectly tidy, which matters when you look at paychecks later in this guide.

The basic conversions

Here are the formulas, followed by examples you can check with a calculator.

• Salary to hourly: annual salary ÷ 2,080
• Hourly to salary: hourly rate × 2,080
• Hourly to weekly: hourly rate × hours per week
• Weekly to yearly: weekly pay × 52
• Yearly to monthly: annual pay ÷ 12

Example 1: A $65,000 salary. $65,000 ÷ 2,080 = $31.25 an hour. That's $1,250 a week, or about $5,416.67 a month.

Example 2: An $18 hourly job. $18 × 2,080 = $37,440 a year at 40 hours a week.

Example 3: Part-time at 25 hours a week. A $20 hourly job at 25 hours is $20 × 25 = $500 a week. Over 52 weeks, that's $26,000 a year. Use your real weekly hours here, not 40.

There's a popular shortcut for full-time hourly pay: double the hourly rate and add three zeros. At $18 an hour, that gives $36,000. It's quick, but it treats a year as 2,000 hours instead of 2,080, so it comes out about 4% low. That's $1,440 short in this example, which is enough to matter when you're comparing offers.

The monthly math mistake

One of the most common errors is multiplying weekly pay by four to get a monthly figure. A month is longer than four weeks. A year has 52 weeks and 12 months, so the average month has 52 ÷ 12 = about 4.33 weeks.

Example 4: $25 an hour, 40 hours a week. Weekly pay is $1,000. Multiplying by four gives $4,000 a month. The accurate average is $25 × 2,080 ÷ 12 = about $4,333.33. Using four weeks makes the job look like it pays about $4,000 less per year than it does.

The opposite mistake matters for budgeting. If you're paid every two weeks, most months bring two paychecks, but two months of the year usually bring three. Some people build their budget on two checks a month and treat the extra ones as a bonus for savings or debt.

How pay periods change each paycheck

Two jobs with the same salary can have very different paychecks depending on how often you're paid. Here's a $52,000 salary split by common schedules, before taxes:

• Weekly (52 paychecks): $52,000 ÷ 52 = $1,000
• Every two weeks (26 paychecks): $52,000 ÷ 26 = $2,000
• Twice a month (24 paychecks): $52,000 ÷ 24 = about $2,166.67
• Monthly (12 paychecks): $52,000 ÷ 12 = about $4,333.33

Every two weeks and twice a month sound alike, but they aren't the same. Biweekly pay gives you 26 smaller checks, and semimonthly pay gives you 24 larger ones. The yearly total is the same.

Because the calendar doesn't divide evenly, some years contain 27 biweekly paydays instead of 26. OPM's example shows how this can play out for federal workers: an employee whose hourly rate is $42.66 is paid that rate for 80 hours per biweekly paycheck, and in a year with 27 paydays receives $92,146 rather than the $89,033 annual rate. If your employer pays every two weeks, it's worth asking how it handles those years, because a 27th paycheck can either add to your yearly pay or mean each check is a little smaller.

Adjust for unpaid time off

The 2,080-hour conversion assumes you're paid for every week of the year. That's usually true for a salaried job with paid vacation and holidays. It often isn't true for hourly work.

The Labor Department says the Fair Labor Standards Act doesn't require payment for time not worked, such as vacations, sick leave or holidays. Those benefits are a matter of agreement between you and your employer. So if an hourly job doesn't offer paid time off, any week you take off is a week without pay.

Example 5: $22 an hour with two unpaid weeks. At 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, the job pays $22 × 2,080 = $45,760. If you take two unpaid weeks for vacation and holidays, you're paid for 50 weeks: $22 × 40 × 50 = $44,000. That's $1,760 less than the headline number.

To compare this job with a salaried offer that includes paid time off, use the $44,000 figure. A good rule of thumb is to multiply the hourly rate by the hours you expect to be paid for, not the hours in a theoretical year.

Find your effective hourly rate

Your effective hourly rate is what you earn for each hour you actually work. It can be quite different from the 2,080-hour number, in both directions.

The formula is simple: yearly pay ÷ hours you actually work in a year.

Example 6: Long weeks on a salary. You earn $70,000 and regularly work 50 hours a week. You get two weeks of paid vacation, so you work 50 weeks.

• Hours worked: 50 × 50 = 2,500
• Effective hourly rate: $70,000 ÷ 2,500 = $28.00

The standard conversion says $70,000 ÷ 2,080 = about $33.65. The long weeks quietly cut each hour's value by more than $5.

Example 7: Paid time off works the other way. Same $70,000 salary, but now you work 40 hours a week and get three weeks of paid vacation plus 10 paid holidays. That's 15 workdays plus 10 workdays, or 25 days, which is 200 hours off with pay.

• Hours worked: 2,080 − 200 = 1,880
• Effective hourly rate: $70,000 ÷ 1,880 = about $37.23

Same salary, two very different results: about $28 an hour in Example 6 and about $37 in Example 7. When you're comparing jobs, this number is often more useful than the salary alone.

Comparing an hourly offer with a salaried one

Long weeks don't always lower your hourly value. It depends on whether you're paid overtime.

Under federal law, most workers covered by the FLSA must receive overtime for hours over 40 in a workweek, at no less than time and one-half their regular rate. Some salaried workers are exempt from overtime. To be exempt, a worker generally has to meet both a duties test and a salary test, and the Labor Department notes that job titles do not determine exempt status. The salary level for that test is set by regulation, so check the current figure with the Labor Department.

Example 8: Two offers for a 45-hour week. Offer A pays $24 an hour and is eligible for overtime. Offer B is a $55,000 exempt salary. Both jobs usually run 45 hours a week, and both include two weeks of paid vacation.

Offer A:

• Straight time: 40 × $24 = $960
• Overtime: 5 × $36 = $180
• Weekly pay in a working week: $1,140
• Yearly pay: 50 working weeks × $1,140 = $57,000, plus two paid vacation weeks at 40 hours (2 × $960 = $1,920), for $58,920

Offer B:

• Yearly pay: $55,000
• Hours worked: 45 × 50 = 2,250
• Effective hourly rate: $55,000 ÷ 2,250 = about $24.44

On pay alone, Offer A comes out about $3,920 ahead, even though $24 an hour sounds smaller than $55,000. That gap shrinks if the hourly job's extra hours aren't reliable, and it can flip if Offer B comes with a bigger retirement match or cheaper health insurance. For a deeper look at how overtime is figured, see our guide on calculating overtime pay.

Common mistakes to avoid

A few errors show up again and again when people convert pay:

1. Multiplying weekly pay by four for a monthly figure, which understates pay by about 8%.
2. Using 2,000 hours instead of 2,080, which understates yearly pay by about 4%.
3. Ignoring unpaid weeks for hourly jobs that don't offer paid time off.
4. Ignoring long weeks in exempt salaried jobs, which can make a salary look better than it is per hour.
5. Comparing gross pay with take-home pay. An offer letter shows gross pay. Your bank account shows what's left after taxes and deductions.
6. Leaving out benefits. A retirement match, health coverage and paid leave all have real dollar value that doesn't appear in the hourly rate.

What to do next

Start with the job you have now. Gather your gross pay from a recent pay stub, then write down the hours you actually worked over a typical month, including evenings and weekends. Divide to find your effective hourly rate. That number gives you a baseline for every offer you see.

When an offer arrives, convert it to both a yearly figure and an effective hourly rate using the hours you expect to work. If you're paid every two weeks, ask how the company handles 27-payday years. Then list the benefits side by side. If the numbers are close, you have useful facts to bring to a conversation about pay, and our guide on negotiating a job offer walks through how to raise them.

Finally, keep in mind that minimum wage rules set a floor. The federal minimum wage has its own rate, and some state laws provide greater protections, so check the current federal and state figures if a job's hourly rate is near the bottom.