Salary & Paycheck
A salary, an hourly rate and a pay stub are three ways of describing the same money, and they rarely line up in your head. These calculators convert between them and show what the extra hours are really worth.
Calculators in Salary & Paycheck
Other categories
- Loans & DebtPayments, payoff order, and the true cost of borrowing.
- Mortgage & Real EstateMonthly payment, affordability, refinancing and equity.
- Investing & SavingsHow capital grows, and what a contribution changes.
- Auto FinanceFinancing, leasing, and what a car costs to keep.
- Business & AcquisitionWhat a business earns, what it is worth, what it costs to buy.
About salary & paycheck
Pay is quoted in whatever unit suits the person quoting it. A job advertises a salary, an agency quotes an hourly rate, a contract states a day rate, and comparing them means converting to a common basis — which sounds trivial until you notice that the number of working hours in a year is itself an assumption.
The convention here is 2,080 hours: forty hours a week across fifty-two weeks. That figure treats paid holiday as worked time, which is right for a salaried employee and wrong for a contractor who is not paid when they do not work. Where that distinction changes the answer, the page says so.
Overtime is the one part of this governed by federal law rather than convention. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1), a covered employee is owed at least one and a half times their regular rate for hours past forty in a workweek — and the regular rate includes more than base pay, which is where most overtime disputes actually start.
What goes wrong here
Each of these costs real money, and each is avoidable once it is named.
Comparing a contract rate to a salary directly
A salary carries paid leave, employer payroll taxes and often insurance. A contract rate carries none of them. The headline numbers are not comparable until those are priced in.
Assuming the regular rate is the base rate
For overtime, the regular rate includes non-discretionary bonuses and shift differentials. Calculating overtime on base pay alone understates what is owed.
Working from gross when the decision is about net
Gross pay comparisons ignore that tax is progressive and that benefits differ. Two roles with identical gross can leave very different amounts in your account.
Questions people ask
2,080 by the standard convention — 40 hours × 52 weeks. It counts paid holiday as worked time. If you are paid only for hours actually worked, subtract your unpaid time off and the effective hourly rate rises accordingly.
Non-exempt employees covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, for hours over 40 in a workweek, at no less than 1.5× the regular rate. Exemption depends on duties and salary level, not job title. Some states set rules above the federal floor, including daily overtime thresholds.
Federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare, any state and local tax, and pre-tax deductions for retirement and insurance. The gap is routinely 25–35%. Calculators that model it need current-year tax data, which is why this site publishes those only when the figures are sourced and dated rather than remembered.