Salary Calculator

Hourly wages and annual salary

The standard conversion assumes a 40-hour week across 52 weeks, which is 2,080 working hours a year. That is the figure most employers quote, and it is what salaried exempt roles are usually benchmarked against.

If you are not paid for all 52 weeks — unpaid parental leave, a two-week shutdown, or a contract with a break — lower the weeks-per-year field. Someone earning $35 an hour working 48 paid weeks earns $67,200 rather than $72,800.

Salaried employees who work overtime on paper often earn far less per hour than advertised. Do the reverse conversion: divide your salary by the hours you actually work, including evenings and weekends.

What comes off each paycheck

Gross pay and take-home pay are two very different numbers. Everything else falls into three buckets:

• Pre-tax deductions — 401(k), 403(b), HSA, FSA, and most health premiums. These come out before income tax is computed, so they lower your taxable income.
• Mandatory payroll taxes — Social Security at 6.2% (up to the annual wage base) and Medicare at 1.45%, with an extra 0.9% above $200,000.
• After-tax deductions — Roth contributions, life insurance beyond the imputed amount, union dues, garnishments and disability policies that are not pre-tax.

Comparing offers across pay frequencies

Weekly, biweekly, semimonthly and monthly employees all receive the same annual amount, but the per-check figures vary a lot. Biweekly means 26 checks, so each is slightly smaller than half of a monthly check; semimonthly means 24 checks paid on fixed dates; twice-monthly budgeting often works better because each check is identical.

The comparison table on this page shows all four side by side so you can sanity-check a new offer or plan a monthly budget that assumes the smallest possible month.

Negotiating with these numbers

Know your effective tax rate before you negotiate, because it tells you what a raise is really worth. At a 20% effective rate, a $10,000 raise contributes about $8,000 a year to take-home pay, or roughly $667 a month.

Also compare total compensation rather than base salary alone. Employer retirement contributions, health premium subsidies, equity, bonuses and remote-work savings can easily be worth 20% to 30% more than base pay.