Pay Calculator

🧭Start here: one tool for every way pay is quoted

This page is a gross pay calculator: I built it to convert a single pay figure between hourly, daily, weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly, monthly and annual terms — always before tax, always in gross dollars. If you arrived here searching for an hourly calculator, you are in the right place: the hourly rate is the anchor every other figure hangs from, and I show each conversion step rather than just the answer. Employers run exactly the same arithmetic from the other side of the desk — every payroll calculator starts from the gross figures produced here, then subtracts the withholding I deliberately leave out.

Three neighbouring tools pick up where this one stops. For salary-to-hourly equivalence in depth, I keep the Salary Calculator. For the net figure that actually reaches your bank account, use the Take-Home Pay Calculator. And for the tax computation itself — brackets, withholding, refunds — the Tax Calculator does that job. This page answers one question only, and answers it completely: what do I earn?

🧮How gross pay is calculated

Overtime is added to the weekly total first — then that week is scaled to every pay period:

Worked example: $25/hr, 40 h/week, 5 overtime hours → regular $1,000.00 + overtime $187.50 = $1,187.50/week → $2,375.00 biweekly → $61,750.00/year → $5,145.83/month. Daily = $61,750 ÷ 260 = $237.50; semi-monthly = $61,750 ÷ 24 = $2,572.92; quarterly = $61,750 ÷ 4 = $15,437.50.

🕐The 2,080-hour rule: why monthly pay is not weekly × 4

A full-time year is 2,080 hours (40 hours × 52 weeks). Monthly gross is the annual figure divided by 12 — which works out to weekly × 4.333…, not × 4. That is why $1,000/week becomes $4,333.33/month instead of $4,000.

The same trap applies to biweekly (26 paychecks) versus semi-monthly (24 paychecks): they are different frequencies, so the per-check amounts differ even when the annual total matches. On $52,000/year: biweekly = $2,000.00 per check, semi-monthly = $2,166.67 per check.

📊One wage, every pay period: the table I start from

Whenever I convert pay, I anchor on one wage and build every period from it — the same way I would use this page as a monthly income calculator or a biweekly pay calculator. Here is $25 an hour, 40 hours a week, expressed every way an employer might quote it:

The monthly row is the one people get wrong, so let me be precise about it. Your gross monthly income is the annual gross divided by 12 — $52,000 ÷ 12 = $4,333.33 — never the weekly figure times four, which silently drops a whole month of pay across a year. Any honest monthly gross income calculator works the same way: annualise first, then divide. That is also why a biweekly budget feels uneven. Twenty-six biweekly checks spread over twelve months means two months a year carry a third paycheck — on $25 an hour, those two months hand you $6,000 instead of $4,000. I plan those two extra checks in advance (insurance renewals, annual bills, debt principal) instead of letting them evaporate.

The table also runs backwards, which is how I use it as a gross annual income calculator check on any salary offer. A $78,000 salary sounds abstract until I divide it down: $78,000 ÷ 2,080 = $37.50 an hour, $1,500.00 a week, $3,000.00 biweekly and $6,500.00 in gross monthly income. If the hourly equivalent disappoints you, the salary was never as generous as it looked — the conversion just exposed it.

One practical note from my own budgeting: the frequency itself changes nothing you earn in a year — $52,000 is $52,000 — but it changes how the money feels. Semi-monthly checks arrive on fixed calendar dates, which lines up neatly with rent and loan due dates; biweekly checks drift through the calendar but hand you those two three-check months a year. When I compare two offers with identical salaries, I convert both to annual first, then ask which frequency fits my fixed bills better.

⏱The hourly view: 2,080 hours, part-time math, and the wages I get asked about

Every figure on this page descends from one assumption I want to make visible: a full-time year is 2,080 hours (40 hours × 52 weeks). That is the convention behind any hourly wage calculator worth trusting, and it is the first thing I check when an hourly pay calculator hands me a number I cannot reproduce — if the hours basis is hidden, the annual figure is a guess wearing a suit.

Part-time work scales in a straight line, and I run it the same way: multiply your real weekly hours by 52, then by your rate. At $25 an hour, 30 hours a week is 1,560 hours and $39,000 a year ($3,250.00 a month); 25 hours a week is 1,300 hours and $32,500 a year; 20 hours a week is 1,040 hours and $26,000 a year. No rounding tricks and no “about a month” — hours first, money second.

These are the full-time conversions I am asked for most often — every one at 40 hours a week, before tax:

If your wage is not in the table, the calculator above performs the identical multiplication exactly — the table exists so you can sanity-check it, and so can I.

💵Overtime: what 1.5× is really worth

Overtime hours are paid at 1.5× your regular hourly rate (time-and-a-half) and added to your regular weekly pay before anything is scaled up. Five overtime hours at $25/hr add $187.50 per week — which is $9,750.00 per year on top of a $52,000 base salary (5 × $25 × 1.5 × 52).

That is nearly a 19% raise for 5 extra hours a week — which is why overtime-heavy roles can out-earn higher base rates. The effective hourly rate above folds it all together: $61,750 ÷ (45 × 52) ≈ $26.39/hr for the example.

📏Overtime, checked properly: the rule behind the 1.5×

The 1.5× in the calculator is not a custom — it is federal law. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, covered non-exempt employees must be paid at least one and one-half times their regular rate for every hour beyond 40 in a single workweek (US Department of Labor). Two details in that sentence do real work. First, the clock is the workweek — a fixed 168-hour stretch your employer defines — and hours cannot be averaged across two weeks to dodge the premium. Second, salaried exempt staff sit outside the rule entirely, which is why the same 50-hour week pays so differently depending on classification.

Here is how I check an overtime week by hand, splitting regular and overtime pay the way the results card above does. At $20 an hour working 46 hours: regular pay is 40 × $20 = $800.00; the overtime rate is $20 × 1.5 = $30.00, so 6 overtime hours pay $180.00; the week totals $980.00 — $1,960.00 biweekly, $4,246.67 monthly and $50,960.00 a year if the schedule held, against $41,600 for the same job with no overtime. At $32.50 an hour working 50 hours: regular $1,300.00, overtime 10 × $48.75 = $487.50, the week $1,787.50 and the year $92,950.00 — an effective $35.75 an hour spread across all 50 hours.

One trap I always flag: the FLSA “regular rate” is not always your base rate. Non-discretionary bonuses — the kind promised in advance for production, attendance or safety — must be folded into the regular rate before the 1.5× is applied. Earn $20 an hour, work 45 hours and collect a $100 weekly production bonus, and your total straight-time pay is $1,000 for 45 hours: a regular rate of $22.22, which makes the overtime premium $55.56 and the week $1,055.56. Paid the naive way — bonus stacked on after a $30.00 overtime rate — you would receive $1,050.00, short $5.56 a week and $288.89 a year. Small per week; real money per year.

And a myth worth dropping: the FLSA sets no double-time requirement at all — double time exists only where a contract, an employer policy or a state rule creates it. Some states layer daily overtime rules on top of the federal weekly one, and where state and federal rules both apply, the Department of Labor’s position is that the standard paying you more is the one that counts. Overtime premiums, finally, are taxed as ordinary wages — there is no special overtime tax rate waiting to ambush your paycheck.

⛱Time off: what holidays and vacation really cost

Your headline annual salary assumes you work every weekday in the year — all 260 of them at five days a week. Paid time off doesn’t reduce a salaried paycheck — but it changes your effective rate, which matters when comparing offers.

Worked example: $30/hr, 8 h/day → unadjusted $30 × 8 × 260 = $62,400. With 10 holidays + 15 vacation days: $30 × 8 × (260 − 25) = $56,400 adjusted — an effective $27.12/hr instead of $30. Enter your days above to see both figures side by side.

⚖️Gross pay vs take-home: what this page leaves out

This calculator converts gross pay only — what you earn before anything is withheld. Federal and state income taxes, Social Security, Medicare, 401(k) contributions, and health insurance premiums all come out afterward.

Think of it this way: this page answers “what do I earn,” and these pages answer “what do I keep”:

• Salary Calculator — gross salary to take-home pay with tax math.
• Take-Home Pay Calculator — detailed paycheck breakdown.

🏢From the employer’s side: payroll runs this math in reverse

I find it helps to see your pay the way the payroll department does, because their sequence explains every payslip you will ever query. A payroll run starts with hours and works backwards from this page: verify the hours, compute gross pay exactly as the calculator above does — rate, hours, overtime premium — and only then apply withholding, benefits and garnishments to reach net. When a payslip looks wrong, I retrace it in that order; nine times out of ten the error sits in the hours or the overtime split, not the tax table. Employers also carry the record-keeping duty here — the FLSA requires them to keep accurate records of hours worked and wages paid, which is why your timesheet matters more than your memory in any dispute. The withholding half of the run lives on the Take-Home Pay Calculator and the Tax Calculator; this page owns the gross half, and I keep the two deliberately separate so every number can be checked on its own.

🔎Reading a job offer like a pro

1. Convert everything to annual, whether you are going from salary to hourly or hourly to salary. $25/hr, $2,000 biweekly, and $52,000/year are the same job — the table above does it instantly.
2. Ask which frequency. “Twice a month” (semi-monthly, 24 checks) pays more per check than “every two weeks” (biweekly, 26 checks).
3. Price the overtime. A $2/hr higher base with no overtime can lose to a lower base with steady 1.5× hours — run both.
4. Count the days off. 25 paid days off is worth roughly 10% of salary in effective terms.
5. Then go net. Gross is the starting line — run the finalists through the take-home calculators before deciding.