What a salary is per hour: the 2,080 hour rule
A salary per hour is the annual pay divided by the hours that pay covers in a year. The usual divisor is 2,080, which is 52 weeks of 40 hours. It is wrong whenever the week is not 40 hours, the year is not fully paid, or the employer uses a different convention, and the difference matters when you compare two job offers. This guide shows the sum, where the numbers come from, and how to check what the hourly to salary calculator is doing with yours.
The 2,080 hour rule: salary divided by 52 weeks of 40 hours
A full time year of 52 weeks at 40 hours a week is 2,080 hours. Divide the annual salary by 2,080 and you have the hourly rate: 52,000 a year is exactly 25.00 an hour, and 50,000 a year is 50,000 divided by 2,080, which is 24.0384 and rounds to 24.04. Going the other way, multiply the hourly rate by 2,080: 20 an hour is 41,600 a year.
The US Office of Personnel Management's fact sheet on hourly rates spells out the convention most payroll systems follow: rates are rounded to the nearest cent, with one half cent and over going up, so 18.845 becomes 18.85. Because the rate is rounded, multiplying it back by 2,080 lands a few dollars from the salary you started with: 24.04 times 2,080 is 50,003.20, not 50,000.
Where 2,087 comes from
The 2,080 figure assumes every year has exactly 260 weekdays. It does not. A year has 365 or 366 days, so most years have 261 weekdays and some have 262. The same OPM fact sheet explains that over the 28 year cycle in which the calendar repeats there are, on average, 2,087 work hours a year: 4 years of 2,096 hours, 17 years of 2,088 and 7 years of 2,080, which works out at 2,087.14. The divisor was made permanent for most federal civilian employees in 1986, and OPM's own example is a salary of 89,033 giving 42.66 an hour.
For everyone else, 2,087 is a choice, not a rule, and the gap is small: 50,000 a year is 24.04 an hour at 2,080 hours and 23.96 at 2,087. The gap grows with the salary, so on 120,000 it is 57.69 against 57.50. An hourly figure a little under the one you worked out usually means this divisor.
When the week is not 40 hours
The 2,080 rule quietly assumes a 40 hour week. Many salaried jobs are 37.5 or 35 hours. The same salary is worth more per hour on a shorter contracted week, because you are giving fewer hours for it:
| Hours a week | Hours a year | Per hour |
|---|---|---|
| 40 | 2,080 | 24.04 |
| 37.5 | 1,950 | 25.64 |
| 35 | 1,820 | 27.47 |
| 32 (four day week) | 1,664 | 30.05 |
When two offers quote different weeks, put each into the calculator with its own hours and compare the hourly figures.
Part time and unpaid time off
For an hourly worker, the year is only as long as the paid weeks in it. Someone on 18 an hour for 20 hours a week earns 18 times 20 times 52, which is 18,720 a year, if every week is paid. Two weeks of unpaid leave leave 50 paid weeks, so 20 an hour for 40 hours a week is 40,000 a year rather than 41,600. The calculator's weeks field is for exactly this: 52 for a fully paid year, 50 for two unpaid weeks.
Salaried jobs are different. The salary normally pays for 52 weeks whether or not you take holiday, so the hourly rate of a salary is worked out at 52 weeks and the paid leave is simply part of what you get. Unpaid leave from a salaried job cuts the pay and the hours together, so the rate per hour does not move.
What the hourly rate of a salary means in US overtime law
In the United States the question has a legal answer for salaried employees who are entitled to overtime. 29 CFR 778.113 says the regular hourly rate of an employee on a weekly salary is the salary divided by the number of hours the salary is intended to compensate: a salary of 350 for a regular 35 hour week is 10 an hour, and that is the rate time and a half is built on. A monthly salary is turned into a weekly one first by multiplying by 12 and dividing by 52, and a semi-monthly salary by multiplying by 24 and dividing by 52. The regulation's own example is a monthly salary of 1,560 for 40 hours a week: 1,560 times 12 is 18,720, divided by 52 is 360 a week, divided by 40 is 9 an hour.
That is the 2,080 rule written week by week, and it hinges on the hours the salary is for. Whether a salaried job is entitled to overtime at all depends on the exemption rules, which are outside this guide; the overtime pay guide covers the sums once the rate is known.
Why two calculators disagree
Put the same salary into two websites and you can get two hourly rates. Almost always, one of four things differs:
- The divisor. 2,080 is the common one; 2,087 is the federal one; some tools use 2,000 (50 weeks of 40 hours), which turns 50,000 into a round 25.00. The popular shortcut of halving the salary and dropping three zeros is the 2,000 hour version, and it runs 4 percent high.
- The weeks. A year is 365.25 days, which is 52.18 weeks, and a few calculators use that instead of 52. At 40 hours it gives 2,087 hours, the same as OPM's figure for the same reason.
- The hours. A tool that assumes 40 hours cannot know your contract says 37.5. That alone moves 50,000 from 24.04 to 25.64.
- Rounding on the way. Working out a monthly figure, rounding it, then dividing by hours gives a slightly different answer from dividing the exact annual figure. The calculator here keeps the annual amount exact and rounds each period once.
Pay frequency is a related trap: biweekly pay comes 26 times a year and semi-monthly pay 24 times, so 50,000 is 1,923.08 every two weeks but 2,083.33 twice a month, and neither changes the annual figure.
Checking an hourly figure by hand
- Find the hours a week the salary is for, from the contract or offer, not from habit.
- Multiply by the paid weeks, usually 52 for a salary, fewer for hourly work with unpaid time off.
- Divide the salary by that total and round to the cent at the end.
- Compare like with like. Put both offers on the same hours and weeks before judging which pays more.
Everything here is gross pay, before tax and deductions. The federal minimum wage in the United States is 7.25 an hour, which at 2,080 hours is 15,080 a year gross. For any rate or salary, the hourly to salary calculator takes the rate or the salary, your hours and your weeks, and shows every pay period from the one exact figure, in your browser and nowhere else.
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