Convert an hourly wage into an annual salary — or a salary back to an hourly rate. See your pay as annual, monthly, bi-weekly, weekly, and hourly, based on your hours per week and weeks per year.
Wage converter
To turn an hourly wage into an annual salary, multiply by the hours you work per week and the weeks you work per year: Annual = hourly × hours/week × weeks/year. At $25/hour for 40 hours over 52 weeks, that's $25 × 40 × 52 = $52,000 a year. To go the other way, divide the salary by (hours/week × weeks/year). A handy shortcut for a standard 40-hour, 52-week year: hourly × 2,080 = annual salary, and salary ÷ 2,080 = hourly.
Adjust the weeks-per-year if you take unpaid time off — using 50 weeks instead of 52 accounts for two unpaid weeks. This is gross (pre-tax) pay; your take-home will be lower after income tax, Social Security, Medicare, and other deductions. Use the Salary or Take-Home Paycheck calculator to see your net pay.
A full-time year is 40 × 52 = 2,080 hours. Hourly × 2,080 = annual salary; salary ÷ 2,080 = hourly rate.
Set weeks/year to 50 (or fewer) if you take unpaid vacation, so the conversion reflects your real working year.
These figures are before tax. Your take-home pay will be lower — check the Take-Home Paycheck calculator.
Comparing an hourly job with a salaried one requires more than multiplying by 2,080, because the two arrangements bundle different things. Salaried roles typically include paid holiday, sick leave and employer benefits, while a contract hourly rate often includes none of them — so the headline rates are not comparable until unpaid time off and benefit costs are accounted for. A commonly used rule of thumb is that a contractor needs roughly 25–30% above an equivalent salaried rate to break even on benefits alone, before allowing for self-employment tax and unbilled time.
Annual = hourly × hours per week × weeks workedEffective hourly from salary = Annual ÷ actual hours workedContractor equivalent ≈ salary rate × 1.25 to 1.40where:
Assumptions: Gross comparison. Self-employment tax adds roughly 7.65 percentage points for independent contractors relative to employees, and unbillable administration time reduces effective contractor rates further.
Compare a contract rate with a salaried offer on a like-for-like basis.
Result$45/hr contract ≈ $69,800 salary-equivalent — well below the $85,000 offer
To match $85,000 properly the contract rate would need to be around $55/hour. This is the calculation that catches people moving from employment into contracting: the headline rate looks like a large raise and frequently is not one at all.
The team behind these free tools builds custom calculators, utility tools, website design, ERP and CRM systems and custom software — plus content writing and research.