Hourly PayHourly pay or salary: how to compare two offers
An hourly job and a salaried job can look alike on paper and pay very differently in practice. The fair way to compare them is to bring both to the same unit, pay per hour actually worked, and then look at what else comes with each.
Step 1: find the true hours
For the hourly job, count the hours you can expect each week and the weeks you will be paid. For the salaried job, count the hours the work really takes, not the hours in the contract.
Step 2: bring both to a year and to an hour
- Hourly to yearly: rate times hours a week times paid weeks. At 40 hours and 52 weeks that is the rate times 2,080.
- Salary to hourly: salary divided by the hours worked in the year.
The calculator does both, and the tables give the standard full-time figures.
Step 3: count what the hour does not show
- Overtime. Under the federal law of the United States, covered hourly employees are paid at least one and a half times their regular rate for hours over 40 in a week. Many salaried jobs are exempt from that rule, so extra hours add nothing.
- Paid leave. Weeks of paid holiday and sick leave are worth their pay. An hourly job without paid leave pays for fewer weeks.
- Benefits. Health insurance, retirement contributions and bonuses can be a large part of the total. Ask what the employer pays for each.
- Steadiness. A salary is the same every month. Hourly pay moves with the hours offered.
A worked example
Offer A pays $24 an hour for 40 hours a week, with two unpaid weeks off: $24 times 40 times 50 is $48,000. Offer B is a $52,000 salary that usually takes 48 hours a week for 52 weeks: $52,000 divided by 2,496 hours is $20.83 an hour. B pays more in the year, A pays more for each hour. Which is better depends on what the extra hours and the benefits are worth to you.
Words you will meet
- Gross pay: pay before tax and deductions. Everything on this site is gross.
- Net or take-home pay: what reaches your bank account.
- Full-time equivalent: 2,080 hours a year, the figure official United States statistics use to turn hourly pay into yearly pay.
- Exempt: not covered by the overtime rule.
General information checked in November 2026. Overtime and minimum wage rules have exceptions and differ by state and country; this is not legal or financial advice. For the United States, see the Wage and Hour Division at dol.gov/agencies/whd.