How much do I make an hour?
Your contract gives you an hourly rate, but the hours a job really takes and the money it really leaves you are different numbers. Enter your salary and contracted hours, then your tax rate, unpaid overtime, commute and work costs, and this calculator shows your hourly pay on paper and your real hourly wage. The comparison underneath shows how far each one drags the number down.
From paper rate to real wage
Your hourly rate after each cost is taken into account, one at a time. The bar at the bottom is what an hour of your life is actually paid.
Your pay by period
The same job seen per hour, day, week, month and year, on paper and in reality.
| Period | On paper | Take-home | Real, per hour of your time |
|---|
How your hourly pay is worked out
The paper rate divides salary by contracted hours. The real wage divides what you keep by every hour the job uses, including the ones nobody pays for.
Hourly pay on paper
The standard conversion: salary divided by contracted hours over all 52 weeks, since paid holidays are paid weeks.
paper rate = salary ÷ (hours × 52)
Take-home pay
Remove tax and payroll deductions.
take-home = salary × (1 − tax rate)
Take off work costs
Money you spend only because you work.
kept = take-home − work costs × 12
Count every hour
Contracted hours, unpaid overtime and commuting, over the weeks you work.
job hours = (hours + overtime + commute × days) × weeks
Real hourly wage
What you keep for each hour the job really takes.
real wage = kept ÷ job hours
Hourly pay questions
How do I convert my salary to an hourly wage?
Divide your yearly salary by the hours you are paid for in a year. A full-time job of 40 hours a week for 52 weeks is 2,080 hours, so a $52,000 salary works out at $25 an hour. Paid holidays are included in that figure, because you are paid for those weeks too.
What is a real hourly wage?
It is what you actually keep for every hour your job takes from you. It starts with take-home pay after tax and work costs, and divides it by all the hours the job uses, including unpaid overtime and the commute. For many people it is a third or more below the headline rate.
Should commuting time count as work time?
For this calculation, yes. You would not spend that time travelling if you did not have the job, so it is part of what the job costs you. That is also why a lower-paid job close to home can beat a higher-paid one with a long commute.
What work costs should I include?
Anything you spend only because you work: fuel, parking or transit fares, work clothes, lunches bought near the office, and childcare during working hours. Leave out things you would buy anyway.
What tax rate should I use?
Use your overall effective rate: total income tax and payroll deductions divided by gross pay. Your payslip or last tax return gives you the numbers. It is usually well below your top tax bracket.
How does unpaid overtime change my pay?
If you are salaried and regularly stay late, every extra hour lowers what you earn per hour. Five unpaid hours a week on a 40-hour contract cuts your effective rate by about 11 percent.