UK Hourly Wage to Annual Salary Calculator

The formula

• Base weekly pay = hourly rate × hours per week
• Overtime pay = overtime hours × hourly rate × overtime multiplier
• Paid weeks = weeks per year − unpaid weeks
• Annual salary = (base weekly + overtime) × paid weeks

A worked example

At $28 an hour for 40 hours a week with no overtime and two unpaid weeks, you work 50 paid weeks: $1,120 a week, $2,240 biweekly, about $4,666.67 a month and $56,000 a year. Add five overtime hours a week at 1.5× and the annual figure rises to $66,500.

More about the Hourly to Salary Calculator

The 2,080-hour rule and its limits

The full picture, one example. $28 an hour, 40 hours a week, two unpaid weeks, no overtime: 50 paid weeks × $1,120 = $56,000 a year, $1,120 a week, $2,240 biweekly, about $4,666.67 a month. Add five overtime hours a week at 1.5× ($42/hour): $10,500 more, $66,500 total. Two numbers that describe the same job, $10,500 apart, which is why "what's the salary" is unanswerable until you know the hours.

Run the numbers before the decisions hourly workers actually face: two offers with different rates and hours, compare the annualised figures, never the hourly headline. Wondering if overtime is worth it? Price it: five hours at 1.5× is a 19% raise on this example. Going part time? See exactly what fewer hours cost per year. And budget on the monthly figure. That is what your rent competes with. The biweekly number matters too: many US workers are paid every two weeks, and $2,240 hitting your account feels very different from $4,666 a month.

Beyond gross pay: benefits and negotiation

Tips. The ×2,080 shortcut is fine for quick comparisons but wrong for your actual budget, use real paid weeks. Overtime is taxed like ordinary income; there is no special overtime tax rate, whatever the break room says. And when comparing across countries, convert the hours first: 40 hour US weeks, 37.5 hour UK weeks and 38 hour Australian weeks make the same hourly rate worth different annual salaries.

The boundaries: gross pay only, no tax, no deductions, no benefits valued. It assumes your hours are steady; gig workers with wildly varying weeks should use an average and treat the result as approximate. Overtime rules differ by jurisdiction (the 1.5× default is US standard; your contract or award may differ). For take home precision, run the gross figure through your country's tax calculator next.

Part time, overtime and irregular hours

Part time workers need a different calculation: multiply your hourly rate by your actual weekly hours, not 40. Someone earning $22/hour working 24 hours a week makes about $27,456 a year (22 × 24 × 52), less than half the full time equivalent, which surprises people who anchor on the 40 hour number. If your hours vary, use a three month average rather than your best week; budgets built on best weeks fail in slow months.

Overtime complicates the picture further. In the US, non exempt employees earn 1.5× for hours past 40 per week, so a $20/hour worker doing 5 overtime hours weekly actually earns the equivalent of about $47,500 a year, not $41,600. Some employers also offer comp time instead of overtime pay. This calculator has separate overtime fields for exactly this reason: regular hours and overtime hours are worth different amounts, and blending them into one rate understates what extra shifts really pay.

Comparing two offers that pay in different languages

Suppose one employer offers $24 an hour for 40 hours a week and another offers a flat $52,000 salary. The hourly offer annualises to 24 times 40 times 52, which is $49,920, so the salary looks better by about $2,000. But if the salaried role quietly expects 45 hours a week, its effective rate is $52,000 divided by 2,340 hours, which is $22.22 an hour, less per hour than the job it beat on headline pay.

Now stress test both offers for unpaid time. Give the hourly role two unpaid weeks a year and its annual figure falls to $48,000, because 24 times 40 times 50 paid weeks is $48,000. Salaried roles usually keep paying through holidays, which can close or reverse the gap entirely. The lesson is not that one format wins; it is that hours expected and weeks actually paid move the answer more than the headline numbers suggest, so convert both offers with the same assumptions before comparing.

The 37.5 hour week and other quiet traps

Many contracts define full time as 37.5 hours a week, not 40, because lunch breaks are unpaid. At $20 an hour that difference is real money: 20 times 37.5 times 52 is $39,000 a year, while the same rate at 40 hours gives $41,600. If you annualise a 37.5 hour job with the 40 hour shortcut, you overstate your pay by $2,600 and every budget built on the figure leans the wrong way.

Two more traps catch people regularly. The first is multiplying a weekly wage by four to get a monthly figure: $750 a week times four is $3,000, but the true monthly average is $750 times 52 divided by 12, which is $3,250. The second is building a budget on overtime that is customary but not contracted. Overtime that disappears in a quiet quarter takes the budget with it, so convert the guaranteed hours for planning and treat overtime as a bonus when it arrives.

How to use the Hourly to Salary Calculator

1. Enter your hourly rate before tax.
2. Set your normal hours per week, excluding overtime.
3. Add average overtime hours and the multiplier your employer pays, 1.5 is standard.
4. Enter any unpaid weeks, then press Calculate to see the annual salary equivalent.