Salary Calculator

Enter pay at any frequency and this converts it to every other one, showing an unadjusted figure alongside one that accounts for holidays and unpaid vacation. On $50 an hour over a 40-hour week, the unadjusted annual salary is $104,000; take out 10 holidays and 15 vacation days and it becomes $94,000. That $10,000 gap is what unpaid time off actually costs, and it never appears in a job advert.

Salary and wage are not the same thing

A salary is a fixed annual amount agreed at hiring, paid in regular instalments regardless of how many hours the work took that week. A wage is hours worked multiplied by an hourly rate, so it moves with the schedule.

The distinction carries legal weight in the U.S. Wage earners are usually non-exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which entitles them to overtime at 1.5 times their rate beyond 40 hours in a week, and sometimes double time on holidays. Salaried employees classified as exempt get none of that: work 55 hours and the pay is the same as 40.

To be exempt, an employee must be paid on a salary basis of at least $684 a week, which is $35,568 a year, and perform duties the FLSA recognises as exempt. Some occupations sit outside the rules entirely, including many agricultural workers and certain truck drivers. Wage earners tend to earn less than salaried staff, which is why salaried roles carry more status, though the calculator above works equally well for either.

How the unadjusted and adjusted figures are calculated

Take $30 an hour, eight hours a day, five days a week. Fifty-two weeks gives 260 working days, so the unadjusted annual salary is:

$30 × 8 × 260 = $62,400

Now subtract the days you are not paid for. With 10 holidays and 15 vacation days, 25 days come off the total:

$30 × 8 × (260 − 25) = $56,400

Every other frequency in the table comes from those two annual numbers. The adjusted hourly and daily figures divide the smaller annual total by the same hours and days you actually spend at work, which is why the adjusted hourly rate drops below the rate you were quoted. It is the honest way to compare an hourly job with no paid leave against a salaried one with three weeks of it.

One distinction the table keeps separate: bi-weekly means every two weeks, giving 26 payments a year, while semi-monthly means twice a month, giving 24. They sound interchangeable and produce noticeably different cheques.

Pay frequencies

No federal law dictates how often U.S. workers must be paid, only that payment is regular and predictable. Most states impose their own minimums, with Alabama, Florida, and South Carolina the exceptions. The common patterns:

• Daily. Paid at the end of each day. Mostly short-term contract work.
• Weekly. Usually Fridays. Costly to administer at 52 runs a year, which is why it is less common than the alternatives.
• Bi-weekly. Every two weeks, 26 times a year. Two months each year contain three paydays.
• Semi-monthly. Twice a month, typically the 15th and the last day, 24 times a year. Payday lands on a different weekday each time.
• Monthly. Cheapest for the employer to run, and uncommon in the U.S. compared with much of Europe.

What sits alongside the salary

The number on the offer letter is rarely the whole compensation. Employer-paid health insurance, the employer half of Social Security and Medicare, unemployment tax, retirement contributions and matching, paid holidays and vacation, bonuses, and staff discounts all carry real value. Benefits routinely add 25% to 40% on top of base pay for a full-time salaried role.

Part-time staff are far less likely to receive any of it, which is a large part of why two jobs quoting the same hourly rate can be worth very different amounts. When comparing offers, price the benefits rather than the headline.

Contractors and the self-employed

Freelancers and sole proprietors set their own rates by the hour, the day or the project, and receive none of the above. No paid leave, no employer health contribution, and they pay both halves of Social Security and Medicare through self-employment tax rather than half.

A contract rate therefore has to be meaningfully higher than the equivalent salary to leave the same money in hand. A common rule of thumb is to add 25% to 50% to the equivalent salaried rate to cover unpaid time off, self-employment tax, and periods between contracts. Real markets do not always cooperate, and plenty of contractors accept less, but the arithmetic is worth doing before quoting.

How overtime is calculated

For non-exempt workers, the FLSA requires at least 1.5 times the regular rate for every hour past 40 in a workweek. The workweek is a fixed, recurring 168-hour period, and it does not have to match the calendar week, but employers cannot average two weeks together to avoid paying it. Fifty hours one week and thirty the next still owes ten hours of overtime.

The regular rate is not always the base hourly rate. Non-discretionary bonuses, shift differentials, and commissions have to be folded in first, which raises the overtime rate above a simple 1.5 multiple of base pay. A worker on $20 an hour who also earns a $100 production bonus in a 50-hour week has a regular rate of $22, making overtime $33 rather than $30.

Double time is not federal law. Some states and many union contracts require it beyond a certain daily threshold, and California is the best-known example, requiring time and a half past eight hours in a day and double time past twelve. Holiday premiums are similarly a matter of policy or contract rather than federal requirement.

Because the calculator above prices base pay only, overtime sits on top of every figure it produces. If overtime is a regular feature of the job rather than an occasional spike, it belongs in any comparison between offers.

Gross pay against what actually arrives

Every figure in the table is gross. What lands in the account is smaller, and by more than most people expect.

Federal income tax is withheld on a progressive scale, and most states add their own, though nine have no wage income tax at all. On top of that sits FICA: 6.2% for Social Security up to the annual wage base, and 1.45% for Medicare with no cap, plus an extra 0.9% Medicare surcharge on high earners. Your employer pays a matching 7.65%, which is part of why the true cost of employing someone exceeds their salary.

Then come voluntary deductions. Health insurance premiums, retirement contributions, and flexible spending accounts usually come out pre-tax, which lowers taxable income, while things like Roth 401(k) contributions come out after tax. A $104,000 salary can quite reasonably deliver take-home somewhere in the region of $70,000 to $78,000 depending on state, filing status, and benefit elections.

This is why comparing a gross salary against a contract day rate is misleading in both directions, and why the Tax Calculator linked below is the necessary second step after this one.

Minimum wage, unions, and pay floors

Minimum wage law sets a floor rather than a market rate. The federal $7.25 has not changed since 2009, so in practice most workers are covered by a higher state or city figure. More than thirty states exceed the federal rate, and some cities set higher local minimums than their own state requires.

Tipped workers operate under a separate rule. Employers may pay a cash wage as low as $2.13 federally provided tips bring total earnings to at least the full minimum; if they do not, the employer must cover the shortfall. Several states have abolished this tip credit and require the full minimum before tips.

Collective bargaining sets floors of a different kind. Where a union contract is in force it typically fixes pay scales, scheduled increases, overtime and holiday premiums, and the notice required before changes. Union members generally earn more than non-union workers in comparable roles, though the size of that gap varies widely by industry and region.

Comparing two offers properly

Salary alone rarely settles it. Convert both offers to the same frequency using the table above, then adjust for the things that differ underneath.

Start with paid time off, since that is exactly what the adjusted column prices. A job paying $100,000 with 25 days off and one paying $104,000 with 10 days off are closer than they look, and on a per-day-worked basis the first may be ahead. Next, price the benefits: an employer covering family health premiums may be contributing well over $15,000 a year that never shows on the offer letter, and a 6% retirement match on $100,000 is another $6,000.

Then adjust for location. Cost of living differences between metro areas routinely exceed 40%, and state income tax can swing take-home by several thousand dollars on the same gross. Finally, weigh the things the arithmetic cannot capture: commute length, remote flexibility, the stability of the employer, and whether the role builds skills that raise your next salary rather than just this one.

What the U.S. numbers look like

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. States may set their own, and the higher figure applies: the District of Columbia leads at $17.95, while Georgia's own $5.15 is overridden by the federal floor. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, median usual weekly earnings for full-time workers were $1,214 in the third quarter of 2025, which annualises to about $63,128.

Several factors move an individual figure away from that median.

• Age. Earnings peak roughly between 35 and 65. Men aged 35 to 44 recorded the highest annual earnings at $78,208; women in the same band earned $63,752.
• Education. Workers 25 and over without a high school diploma had median earnings of $40,404, against $50,960 for high school graduates and $90,844 for those with at least a bachelor's degree.
• Experience. Longer tenure in a field generally raises pay, both as a proxy for skill and as evidence of commitment to the industry.
• Race and ethnicity. Black men earned a median of $53,664 against $70,824 for white men. Among women the gap is narrower, $48,204 against $57,356. Hispanic workers of both genders earned $49,088 and Asian workers $84,240.
• Gender. Men averaged $69,316 and women $55,952. The gap has several contributing causes, including occupational segregation, career interruptions around motherhood, and discrimination.
• Industry. The same job title pays differently across sectors. An office administrator at a hedge fund and one at a school district do comparable work for very different money.
• Location. Local supply and demand set local rates, but cost of living decides what they are worth. A 20% raise to move to a city 35% more expensive is a pay cut.
• Conditions. Hazard pay compensates genuinely dangerous work, and shift differentials reward unsociable hours such as the overnight shift, which carry real social and health costs.

Holidays and paid time off

The U.S. has 11 federal holidays: New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Only federal employees are guaranteed all of them. Private employers set their own policy and typically observe six to eleven, and unless a contract or collective agreement says otherwise, there is no obligation to pay extra for working one.

Other countries are more generous. Cambodia has the most statutory non-working days at 28, followed by Sri Lanka at 25. Adjust the holidays field above to match your own situation rather than assuming the U.S. default.

Vacation is a separate matter, and the FLSA requires none at all, paid or unpaid. The average American receives around 10 paid days a year, while the bottom quarter of earners average four. Most employers, over 75%, offer something, since time off reduces burnout and helps retention, and many increase the allowance with tenure. By contrast, European Union countries mandate at least 20 days, and several require 25 or 30.

Many U.S. employers now pool vacation, sick, and personal days into a single paid time off allowance. The advantage is flexibility: no negotiating over how to label an absence. The disadvantage is that a week of genuine illness consumes a week of holiday, which is a real cost when the pool is only ten days deep.

How to raise your salary

Build credentials. Higher qualifications correlate strongly with lifetime earnings, but a full degree is not the only route. Certifications and demonstrable expertise in a niche often move pay faster and cost far less in time and money.

Accumulate experience. Staying in a field signals both skill and commitment, and employers price both.

Use your network. Professional bodies and trade associations exist partly to connect members to opportunities that never reach a job board.

Treat the review seriously. A positive annual review is usually followed by a raise. If it is not, that silence is information, and it is reasonable to ask directly.

Negotiate. Come with specifics: targets exceeded, responsibilities absorbed, revenue influenced. The most valuable negotiation is at hire, since every future percentage raise compounds on the starting figure.

Change employer. Moving jobs commonly delivers a 10% or larger increase, frequently more than staying put would produce over several years. If internal routes are exhausted, it is often the fastest lever available.

How this calculator works

It converts whatever you enter into an annual figure, then divides that across every frequency. Hourly and daily entries are treated as unadjusted rates and multiplied by the full 260 working days; entries at weekly frequency and above are read as figures that already reflect time off, so the unadjusted column is calculated back up from them. Everything assumes 52 weeks in a year.

Two things it deliberately leaves out: tax and deductions, so all figures are gross, and overtime, which is separate from base pay for non-exempt workers. For take-home pay, see our Tax Calculator; to fit the result into monthly spending, the Budget Calculator; and to work out what a raise means long term, the Retirement Calculator.