Hourly Rate to Annual Salary

“$28 an hour” and “$56,000 a year” describe nearly the same pay — but only under assumptions that nobody states out loud. Making those assumptions explicit is the whole trick to comparing offers honestly.

The standard conversion

Annual salary = hourly rate × hours per week × weeks per year. The standard American full-time year is 40 hours × 52 weeks = 2,080 hours:

• $25/hour × 2,080 = $52,000/year
• $60,000/year ÷ 2,080 = $28.85/hour

The double-it shortcut

For 40-hour weeks, doubling the hourly rate and adding three zeros gets you close: $25/hr ≈ $50,000. It works because 2,000 hours (50 weeks × 40) is nearly the full 2,080 — the shortcut runs about 4% low, fine for mental math, not for negotiations.

The assumptions that break comparisons

Paid weeks. A salaried employee with vacation is paid for 52 weeks regardless. A contractor billing hourly who takes four unpaid weeks off works 48 — their $30/hour is $57,600, not $62,400. Deduct unpaid holidays too.

Actual hours.A “40-hour” salaried job that routinely runs 50 hours quietly cuts the effective hourly rate by 20%. Dividing salary by real hours worked is one of the more clarifying career exercises available.

Overtime.Hourly workers often earn 1.5× past 40 hours; exempt salaried workers earn nothing extra. At the margin, that can make the “lower” hourly offer the better-paying job.

Benefits. Employer health insurance, retirement matching and paid leave are worth thousands per year. Contract rates must run meaningfully higher than the salaried equivalent to break even — a common rule of thumb says 1.3–1.5× to cover benefits and self-employment taxes.

Gross, not take-home

All these conversions are pre-tax, and that's correct for comparing offers — taxes depend on your household, not the job. Just remember that the monthly figure a converter shows is not what lands in your account.

A quick reference

• $15/hr ≈ $31,200 · $20/hr ≈ $41,600 · $25/hr ≈ $52,000
• $30/hr ≈ $62,400 · $40/hr ≈ $83,200 · $50/hr ≈ $104,000

(All at 40 hours, 52 paid weeks.)

Convert with your real numbers

The hourly to salary calculator works in both directions and exposes the hours-per-week and paid-weeks assumptions as editable fields — set them to your actual situation and see weekly, monthly and annual figures together. Negotiating a raise instead? The percentage calculatorturns “7% more” into dollars.