Salary to Hourly Wage: How to Convert Correctly
Convert an annual salary to an hourly wage with the standard formula, adjust for real working hours, and compare job offers fairly. Free calculator included.
A salary figure on a job offer looks simple — $60,000 a year, for example — but it hides the question that actually matters: what is each hour of your time worth? Converting a salary to an hourly wage lets you compare offers, weigh overtime, and decide whether a raise is really a raise.
The math itself takes ten seconds, but doing it well means accounting for the hours you actually work, not the hours on paper. This guide walks through the standard formula, the adjustments that make it honest, and how to run the numbers in reverse — then try our free Salary Calculator to do it instantly.
The Standard Formula
The standard conversion is simple division: hourly wage equals annual salary divided by the number of hours worked in a year. For a full-time schedule, that number is usually taken as 40 hours per week multiplied by 52 weeks, which gives 2,080 hours.
So a $60,000 salary becomes $60,000 divided by 2,080, or about $28.85 per hour. A $45,000 salary works out to roughly $21.63 per hour, and $100,000 becomes about $48.08 per hour. Learn the pattern once and you can estimate any offer in seconds.
This formula is the convention recruiters, job boards, and salary surveys use when they translate between pay types, which makes it the right starting point for any comparison. But it assumes a textbook 40-hour week with no time off — and real jobs rarely match the textbook, which is where the adjustments below come in.
Why 2,080 Hours Can Mislead You
The 2,080-hour figure counts every week of the year as a work week, but most employees get paid holidays, vacation days, and sick leave. If you receive 15 vacation days and 10 public holidays, you actually work about 1,880 hours, not 2,080 — and your true hourly rate is higher than the standard formula suggests.
Using the $60,000 example: $60,000 divided by 1,880 is about $31.91 per hour, a full three dollars above the textbook figure. That difference matters when you compare an offer with generous time off against one with a slightly higher salary but no vacation.
Unpaid overtime pushes the number the other way. If you regularly work 50-hour weeks on a $60,000 salary, your real divisor is 2,600 hours and your effective wage drops to about $23.08 per hour. Before accepting any salaried role, ask how many hours people actually work — the honest hourly rate is often the most revealing number in the whole offer.
Converting Back: Hourly to Annual
The reverse trip uses multiplication: annual salary equals hourly wage times hours per week times 52. At $30 per hour on a 40-hour week, that is $30 x 40 x 52, or $62,400 per year.
This direction is useful when you are moving from hourly work to a salaried role and want to know what pay change the switch really means. It is also how you sanity-check a salary offer against what you already earn per hour.
Remember that hourly workers are often paid only for hours actually worked, while salaried workers are usually paid through holidays and slow weeks. A $30-per-hour contractor who takes a month unpaid between projects earns far less than $62,400, so adjust for the weeks you truly expect to work.
Comparing Two Job Offers Fairly
Once both offers are expressed as effective hourly wages, add the value of benefits. Health insurance, retirement contributions, and paid leave all have cash value — a common rule of thumb is that benefits add 20 to 30 percent on top of base pay, though the real figure varies widely.
Then subtract the hidden costs. A longer commute costs both money and unpaid time; a job that expects regular unpaid overtime quietly lowers your hourly rate, as shown above. A remote role that saves you ten commuting hours a week is effectively a raise even at the same salary.
Finally, weigh certainty against upside. A salaried role pays the same in slow months, while hourly or freelance income can swing. There is no universally right answer — but converting everything to an honest hourly figure, benefits included, turns a gut feeling into a comparison you can defend. Try our free Salary Calculator to run both offers side by side in seconds.
Part-Time, Overtime, and Bonuses
Part-time math follows the same formula with your real hours: a $20-per-hour role at 25 hours a week pays $20 x 25 x 52, or $26,000 a year before any unpaid time off. The trap is comparing that annual figure to full-time salaries without adjusting for the hours behind it.
Overtime rules change the picture for hourly workers. In many places, hours beyond 40 per week must be paid at 1.5 times the normal rate, so a $20 base wage becomes $30 for overtime hours. Salaried workers usually get no such premium, which is another reason to compute the effective hourly rate before signing.
Annual bonuses belong in the numerator: add any expected bonus to the salary before dividing. A $60,000 salary with a reliable $6,000 bonus is really $66,000 of compensation, or about $31.73 per hour on the standard 2,080-hour base. Only count bonuses you genuinely expect to receive, and be honest with yourself about how reliable they are.