Hourly to Salary Converter

Most online converters multiply your hourly rate by 2,080 (40 hours × 52 weeks) and call it done. That's the lazy answer, and it's wrong for almost every real worker. You don't work 52 weeks a year — you have holidays, you get sick, you take PTO or you take unpaid time between contracts. The honest comparison starts from weeks actually worked, which for a W-2 full-timer is typically 50, and for a contractor is often 46-48.

A $32/hr rate at 40 hours × 50 weeks is $64,000 — not the $66,560 you'd see on a bad converter. Add overtime, and the math changes again. Ten hours of weekly overtime at time-and-a-half adds $32 × 1.5 × 10 × 50 = $24,000 to the annual total. For hourly workers pulling consistent OT, the base-rate comparison to a salaried peer understates real income significantly.

The other direction matters too. If you're a salaried worker deciding whether to take a $85/hr contract, the right comparison is your effective hourly rate after PTO, benefits, and employer-paid FICA — not your salary divided by 2,080. A $110k salary with 3 weeks PTO, $20k of benefits, and full FICA coverage pencils to around $77/hr of effective comp. The contract at $85 is a $6-8/hr raise, not the $30/hr jump it looks like.

Enter your hourly rate and the hours you actually work in a typical week. Set weeks-per-year to reflect your real time off — 50 is standard for W-2 workers with 2 weeks of PTO, 48 for contractors who take 4 weeks of unpaid time, 52 for gig workers who work through vacations. If you work overtime, enter weekly OT hours at time-and-a-half; federal overtime law requires 1.5× for hours above 40 for non-exempt employees.

The tool returns base annual, overtime pay, total annual salary, and a monthly equivalent. Cross-check against your actual pay stubs. If your real take-home multiplied by 12 doesn't match the monthly number, you either have under-reported hours, unpaid breaks counted in your schedule, or pre-tax deductions (401k, health premium) pulling your gross down.

Hourly jobs cap at about 45-50 hours/week of sustainable labor. Beyond that, either you burn out or the marginal hours are unpaid (common in salaried-misclassified jobs). A $40/hr job at 55 hours is nominally $104k but in practice is $40 × 40 + $40 × 1.5 × 15 = $64k + $36k = $100k — if you're actually paid for overtime. Many workers aren't; their employers misclassify them as exempt to avoid paying OT. If you're hourly-paid and routinely work 50+ hours, verify you're getting OT on every stub.

Converting to salary makes sense when your hours-per-week is predictable, your OT is being paid, and your effective annual is within $5-10k of a salaried version of the same role with benefits. Salary usually comes with better benefits, PTO accrual, and promotion paths, but removes the OT multiplier. If you're consistently pulling 50-60 hours and getting OT, staying hourly might actually pay more.

A specific example: I coached a warehouse lead making $28/hr, 48 hours/week, with full OT coverage. The salaried supervisor role offered $78,000 with "expected hours 45-50." He took the math: his hourly comp with OT was $28 × 40 × 50 + $28 × 1.5 × 8 × 50 = $56,000 + $16,800 = $72,800. The salary job was $5,200 more — but came with unpaid hours above 45. He negotiated the salary up to $83,000 before taking it.

Federal law (Fair Labor Standards Act) requires 1.5× pay for non-exempt workers on hours above 40 in a week. Some states layer on daily overtime rules — California pays 1.5× after 8 hours in a day and 2× after 12. Eight states (including CO, NV, CA) have specific daily OT rules; most don't. If you're a non-exempt worker logging 10-hour days but still in a 40-hour week, you're not automatically owed federal OT — but if you're in California, you are.

The classification trap: employers sometimes call workers "exempt" (salaried, no OT) who legally aren't. Exempt status requires specific duties tests (executive, administrative, professional) AND a salary minimum. In 2025 the federal minimum for exempt status was $684/week ($35,568/year); the DOL has tried to raise this, but court challenges have kept the bar at that level for now. Some states (NY, CA, WA) set higher bars. If you're salaried under about $60k and your duties don't match an exemption category, you may be owed back OT.

The other common mistake: working through lunch. If your employer requires or permits off-the-clock work during lunch breaks and you're non-exempt, that time is compensable. Many workers give away 5-10 hours a week of unpaid labor to their employer by skipping the break and not logging it.

If you're weighing an hourly offer against a salaried offer, the salaried version almost always includes benefits that push effective hourly pay 15-30% higher than the base math shows.

• Employer-paid health premium. $700/mo = $8,400/yr of tax-free comp. On a 2,000-hour year, that's $4.20/hr of hidden value.
• 401(k) match. A 4% match on $90k salary is $3,600/yr — another $1.80/hr.
• PTO. 15 paid days off at $43/hr ($90k salary) is $5,160 — $2.58/hr of hidden value on the 2,000 hours you do work.
• Employer FICA. 7.65% on salary is $6,885 the company pays you don't see on a pay stub. Hourly contractors pay this themselves as self-employment tax.
• Paid holidays. 10 federal holidays at ~8 hours each, paid at your rate, equals another $3,440 of income most hourly workers don't get.

Sum: the $90k salaried role is worth roughly $113-115k/yr in comparable hourly-contractor terms. Divide by 2,000 hours, and the effective hourly is $56-58/hr against the nominal $43/hr salary-divided-by-hours.

When converting from hourly to salary, don't let HR anchor you on base × 2,080. Bring your actual last-12-months gross income to the negotiation. If you were an hourly worker averaging $82,000 (with OT) and they offer $85,000 salary, that's a raise of $3,000 — but you're giving up the OT multiplier and the potential to flex up during busy seasons. That's a push, not a raise.

A strong counter: "Last year I grossed $82k hourly with overtime. Moving to salary removes that flex. I'd like to see a base of $92k to make the move worthwhile — that's 12% above last year's gross, which reflects taking on the salaried responsibility level and giving up OT upside." HR can usually find 5-10% above an initial number with that kind of specific framing. Vague asks ("I'd like more") rarely move the number.

Going the other direction — negotiating a salary job back to hourly — is rare but real. Parents returning from leave sometimes want hourly to protect against expanding workloads. The framing: "I'd like to transition back as hourly at $X/hr to re-establish clear hours boundaries through the first year." That works better than a pay cut request and sidesteps the "I need more flexibility" conversation that makes managers nervous.

For seasonal work (construction, retail holidays, tourism), the weeks-per-year input matters a lot. A seasonal worker at $35/hr for 30 weeks grosses $42,000 on a 40-hour week — significantly less than a year-round worker at the same rate. The right comparison is to annual total income, not hourly rate. Many seasonal workers stack contracts or pull unemployment benefits in off-season; net them all together for the real annual picture.

Gig platform workers (Uber, DoorDash, TaskRabbit) face a different version of the problem. The hourly rate the platform displays often doesn't subtract vehicle costs, insurance, gas, and self-employment tax. A $22/hr Uber rate after $0.30/mi in vehicle costs and 14% SE tax is closer to $13-15/hr take-home. Use the Side Income Tax Estimator to net gig income to the W-2 equivalent.

Irregular-hours workers (restaurant, retail, warehouses with seasonal surges) should track weeks-per-year honestly. The temptation is to enter 52 to make the annual number look big, but your rent bill comes every month regardless. Plan on the lower number; upside weeks become a savings buffer.

Hourly with OT and minimal benefits sometimes beats salary plus rich benefits. Two patterns where this shows up:

1. Your partner carries benefits. If you're on a spouse's health plan, the employer-paid-premium value evaporates from your calculation. A $45/hr contract with no benefits and a $90k salary with $15k in benefits become equivalent at roughly 2,000 hours/year — below that, the contract wins.
2. You work substantially more than 40 hours. Hourly at 55 hours/week with full OT pays 50%+ more than the nominal 40-hour conversion. If you're billing 55 hours anyway at a salaried job, you're doing the work for free above 40. Converting to hourly monetizes those hours.

The opposite case — when salary wins — is most jobs where you work 40-45 hours, want stable year-round income, and value the promotion path and benefits. For a typical mid-career W-2 worker, salary wins by 10-20% of total comp after benefits.