Salary Calculator

How pay is converted between periods

Every conversion goes through the annual amount. Your pay is multiplied up to a year, then divided down to the period you want. What differs is how many of each period fit into a year:

The Standard column uses this 52-week convention: it assumes you are paid for every workday of the year, including holidays and vacation. That is how most employers and job ads convert a salary to an hourly figure and back.

The Adjusted for days off column treats your holidays and vacation days as days you don’t work. Hourly and daily figures are recalculated with the time you actually work; weekly and longer figures are fixed slices of the year, so they only change when you enter an hourly or daily rate. In practice the column answers one of two questions, depending on how you are paid:

• Paid by the hour or day: what you would earn in a year if the days off are unpaid. US federal law doesn’t require employers to pay for holidays or vacation, so for many hourly workers this is the realistic figure.
• Paid a salary (per week or longer): what you earn per hour and per day actually worked, since your days off are paid but not worked.

Salary conversion formulas

For the adjusted column, hourly and daily figures use the time actually worked:

H

hours worked per week

D

days worked per week

O

holidays plus vacation days per year

H ÷ D

hours per day

Each figure is converted from the exact annual amount and rounded to the cent once, so rounding doesn’t pile up from one period to the next. Your entered amount appears unchanged in its own row.

Worked example

You earn $60,000 a year, working 40 hours over 5 days a week, with 10 holidays and 10 vacation days.

1. Paid hours: 40 × 52 = 2,080; workdays: 5 × 52 = 260
2. Hourly rate: $60,000 ÷ 2,080 = $28.85; daily: $60,000 ÷ 260 = $230.77
3. Weekly: $60,000 ÷ 52 = $1,153.85; biweekly: ÷ 26 = $2,307.69; semimonthly: ÷ 24 = $2,500.00; monthly: ÷ 12 = $5,000.00; quarterly: ÷ 4 = $15,000.00
4. Days actually worked: 260 − 20 = 240, or 240 × 8 = 1,920 hours
5. Pay per hour actually worked: $60,000 ÷ 1,920 = $31.25; per day worked: $60,000 ÷ 240 = $250.00

Now the other way round: at $30 an hour on the same schedule, the standard annual figure is $30 × 2,080 = $62,400. If those 20 days off are unpaid, you are paid for 1,920 hours instead, which comes to $57,600 a year, or $4,800 a month.

Things to keep in mind

• This is gross pay. Income tax, social security and other deductions come off before you are paid. Use the income tax calculator to estimate take-home pay.
• Biweekly is not the same as twice a month. Biweekly means 26 paychecks a year, semimonthly means 24, so each biweekly check is smaller. In most years two months contain three biweekly paydays. Because 26 two-week periods cover 364 days, the calendar drifts by a day or two a year, and roughly once every 11 years there are 27 biweekly paydays instead of 26.
• The 52-week year is a convention. A calendar year has 52 weeks plus one day (two in leap years). The US federal government, for example, divides annual salaries by 2,087 hours — the average number of weekday work hours per year over a 28-year cycle — rather than 2,080.
• Overtime is not included. Under the US Fair Labor Standards Act, non-exempt employees must be paid at least one and a half times their regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek. If you enter more than 40 hours, the hourly figure here is a straight-time average.
• Benefits have value too. Two jobs with the same salary can differ a lot once employer retirement contributions, health cover and paid leave are counted. See the retirement calculator for what regular contributions add up to.