Wage Calculator

Background.

Double your hourly rate and add three zeros, the old rule says, and you have your yearly pay: $25 an hour becomes $50,000. The rule is quick and slightly off. A full-time year of 40-hour weeks is 2,080 hours, not 2,000, so the shortcut quietly assumes two weeks without pay. For someone whose vacation is paid, that leaves $2,000 a year out of the picture at $25 an hour; for a contractor who takes unpaid time off, the shortcut may be the more accurate of the two.

That is the real question in turning an hourly wage into a yearly one: how many weeks actually pay. Paid holidays and paid vacation count, because the wage keeps arriving. Unpaid leave, the gap between contracts and the months a seasonal job is shut do not. Hours need the same honesty — the hours you are paid for in an ordinary week, not the schedule in your busiest season.

The answer is gross, straight-time pay: rate times hours times weeks, with nothing added and nothing taken away. Overtime premiums, tips, bonuses and shift differentials sit outside it, and so do income tax, Social Security and Medicare, retirement contributions and the value of benefits. That makes it the right figure for putting an hourly job and a salaried one on the same footing, or for the annual income box on a rental application, and the wrong one for budgeting what reaches your bank account.

One trap is worth knowing about before you convert to monthly pay. A month is not four weeks: 52 weeks spread across 12 months gives an average of about 4.33 weeks per month, so monthly pay is the annual figure divided by 12.

What is wage calculator?

Annual gross wage is what an hourly worker earns over a year at their ordinary rate, for the hours and weeks they are actually paid, before anything is deducted. Weekly gross wage is the same thing for a single week: hourly rate times paid hours. Both are straight-time figures, meaning every hour is paid at the one base rate, so neither includes overtime premiums, commission, tips or employer-paid benefits, and neither has had tax withheld.

How to use this calculator.

1. 01Enter your hourly wage as the base rate on your pay stub or offer letter, before any shift differential or overtime premium.
2. 02Enter the hours you are paid for in a typical week. If your hours vary, average several recent pay stubs rather than picking an unusually busy or quiet week.
3. 03Enter paid weeks per year: 52 if your holidays and vacation are paid, less one for each week of unpaid leave, downtime between contracts or seasonal closure.
4. 04Read the annual and weekly figures. For monthly pay, divide the annual figure by 12; for a biweekly paycheck, double the weekly figure.

The formula.

Annual wage = hourly rate × paid hours per week × paid weeks per year, and weekly wage = hourly rate × paid hours per week. The three inputs simply multiply, so a change in any one moves the annual figure in the same proportion: 10% more paid hours raises it by 10%, exactly as a 10% raise would. No constant is hidden inside. The familiar 2,080-hour full-time year is not built in; it only appears when you enter 40 hours and 52 weeks, and changing either changes it. Weeks are where the biggest honest differences arise. Going from 52 paid weeks to 48 — four weeks of unpaid time off — lowers the annual figure by about 7.7%, while the weekly wage stays exactly the same because it does not use the weeks input at all.

A worked example.

Frequently asked questions.

References& sources.

1. [1]OpenStax, Rice University. Principles of Finance, 2022. Chapters 6–10. Retrieved 2026-08-06.
2. [2]U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Tax guidance current 2026. Official forms, instructions and tax topics. Retrieved 2026-08-06.
3. [3]U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Investor.gov current 2026. Investment products and risk. Retrieved 2026-08-06.