The conversion is one division — the weeks are where people go wrong
Salary to hourly is annual pay divided by the hours you actually work in a year, and the only judgement call in it is the denominator. The standard full-time pattern — 40 hours a week, 52 paid weeks — is 2,080 hours, which is why $52,000 a year and $25.00 an hour are the same job described two ways. Change the pattern and the equivalence moves: the same salary over 50 paid weeks is $26.00 an hour of worked time. This page converts both directions and lays out the whole ladder — hourly, daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, annual — because job offers, contracts and budgets each speak a different one of those languages.
And in reverse: annual salary = hourly rate × hours per week × paid weeks per year. Everything else on the ladder is a multiple or a twelfth of those two.
Worked example
A $52,000 salary at 40 hours a week and 52 paid weeks: $52,000 ÷ 2,080 hours = $25.00 an hour — $200 a day, $1,000 a week, $2,000 biweekly, $4,333.33 a month. Run it backwards and $25.00 an hour rebuilds the same $52,000.
How to use this calculator
- Choose the direction: what you know (salary or hourly) and what you want.
- Set your real working pattern — hours and days per week, and honestly count paid weeks: subtract unpaid leave, keep paid vacation in.
- Compare offers on the same rung of the ladder. A monthly figure and a biweekly figure are the two most often confused; there are 26 biweekly periods in a year, not 24.
- For take-home after tax, hand the annual figure to the Salary Calculator in Related Tools — this page is deliberately gross-pay only, so the conversion stays exact.
Salary vs hourly is not only arithmetic
Two jobs with the same converted rate can differ in overtime eligibility (hourly staff are typically owed 1.5× past 40 hours in the US; many salaried roles are exempt), paid-time-off value, and income stability. This calculator settles the pure conversion so those comparisons start from a true number.