To calculate your annual salary from an hourly wage, multiply your hourly rate by the number of hours you work per week, then multiply that result by 52 (the number of weeks in a year). If you work a standard 40-hour week, the formula is: hourly rate × 2,080 = annual salary. Someone earning $20 per hour, for example, makes $41,600 per year before taxes.
The Basic Formula
The simplest version works for anyone with a consistent schedule and no overtime:
- Hourly rate × hours per week × 52 = gross annual salary
The number 2,080 comes up frequently because it represents 40 hours multiplied by 52 weeks. But not everyone works 40 hours. If you regularly work 35 hours a week, your multiplier is 1,820. If you work 30, it’s 1,560. Use your actual weekly hours for an accurate number.
Here are a few common hourly wages run through the formula at 40 hours per week:
- $15/hour: $31,200/year
- $20/hour: $41,600/year
- $25/hour: $52,000/year
- $30/hour: $62,400/year
- $40/hour: $83,200/year
Adjusting for Unpaid Time Off
The 52-week formula assumes you’re paid for every week of the year. If you don’t get paid vacation, paid holidays, or paid sick leave, your actual annual earnings will be lower. To account for this, reduce the number of weeks.
Say you take two weeks of unpaid vacation and your employer closes for one unpaid week around the holidays. That’s 49 paid weeks instead of 52. At $20 per hour and 40 hours a week, your annual income drops from $41,600 to $39,200. The adjusted formula looks like this:
- Hourly rate × hours per week × weeks actually paid = adjusted annual salary
If you do get paid time off, those weeks still count as paid weeks, so you’d keep 52 in the formula. The key question is whether time away from work still generates a paycheck.
Adding Overtime Pay
If you regularly work more than 40 hours a week, the basic formula will undercount your income. Under federal law, employers must pay non-exempt workers at least one and a half times their regular hourly rate for every hour beyond 40 in a single workweek. This is often called “time and a half.”
To calculate annual pay with consistent overtime, split your weekly earnings into two parts: regular hours and overtime hours. Suppose you earn $25 per hour and typically work 50 hours a week. Your regular pay covers the first 40 hours at $25, which is $1,000. The remaining 10 hours are paid at $37.50 (1.5 × $25), adding $375. Your total weekly pay is $1,375, and over 52 weeks that comes to $71,500 per year.
The formula for this is:
- (Regular hours × hourly rate) + (overtime hours × hourly rate × 1.5) = weekly pay
- Weekly pay × 52 = annual salary with overtime
One important detail: federal overtime rules look at each workweek independently. You can’t average hours across two weeks. If you work 50 hours one week and 30 the next, you still earned 10 hours of overtime during that first week. When estimating your annual income, use your typical weekly pattern rather than a monthly average.
Gross Pay vs. Take-Home Pay
Everything above gives you gross annual pay, which is the total before taxes and deductions. Your take-home pay will be noticeably lower after federal income tax, Social Security tax (6.2% of wages up to the annual wage base), Medicare tax (1.45%), and any state income tax that applies where you live.
Federal income tax uses a progressive bracket system, meaning different portions of your income are taxed at different rates. For tax year 2026, the brackets for a single filer look like this:
- 10% on the first $12,400 of taxable income
- 12% on income from $12,401 to $50,400
- 22% on income from $50,401 to $105,700
- 24% on income from $105,701 to $201,775
Taxable income isn’t the same as gross income. You subtract the standard deduction first, which is $16,100 for single filers in 2026 ($32,200 for married couples filing jointly). So if your gross annual salary is $52,000, your taxable income is roughly $35,900. Based on the brackets above, your federal income tax on that amount would be about $3,860, or around $322 per month. Add in Social Security, Medicare, and any state taxes, and a rough rule of thumb is that most workers take home somewhere between 70% and 80% of their gross pay, depending on their total income and filing situation.
Quick Mental Math Shortcut
If you want a fast estimate without a calculator, double your hourly rate and add three zeros. At $20 per hour, that gives you $40,000, which is close to the actual figure of $41,600. The shortcut slightly underestimates because it effectively multiplies by 2,000 instead of 2,080, but it gets you within about 4% of the real number and works well for quick comparisons when evaluating a job offer or raise.
When You Have Irregular Hours
Not every hourly worker has a predictable schedule. If your hours change from week to week, the best approach is to use your actual pay history rather than a formula. Look at your total gross earnings over the last three to six months on your pay stubs, then scale that number up to a full year. If you earned $18,000 over the past six months, your estimated annual salary is $36,000.
For seasonal workers or anyone whose hours shift dramatically between busy and slow periods, using a full 12 months of pay history gives the most reliable picture. A three-month snapshot during your busiest season will overestimate your annual income, and a slow-season snapshot will underestimate it.