The 2,080 hours nobody questions
Convert a salary to an hourly rate and almost every calculator divides by 2,080: forty hours, fifty-two weeks. That number treats every holiday and every vacation day as paid time, which is true for most salaried jobs and false for many hourly ones. The moment your real year is 48 paid weeks, or your week is 37.5 hours, the honest hourly rate moves — sometimes by more than a dollar. That is why the two assumptions sit in the form above instead of being buried in the code.
The reverse direction has the same trap. An hourly worker comparing a $30 wage against a salaried offer should not multiply by 2,080 unless they are genuinely paid for 2,080 hours. Unpaid holidays, unpaid closures and unpaid sick days come straight off that total.
Salaried does not mean exempt from overtime
Being paid a salary does not, by itself, remove your right to overtime. Federal law exempts an employee only if the job also meets a duties test and a salary threshold; a salaried worker who fails either is still owed time and a half beyond forty hours in a week. If your week routinely runs long, the overtime calculator is the one to open, and the rule it applies is quoted from the regulation itself.
Questions people ask
What hourly rate is a $60,000 salary?
At 40 hours a week for 52 paid weeks, $28.85. At 37.5 hours a week, $30.77. At 48 paid weeks, $31.25. The salary did not change — the hours did.
Why is my hourly rate different from a friend’s on the same salary?
Different paid hours. A 35-hour contract and a 45-hour reality on the same salary are two very different hourly rates, which is exactly the calculation an offer letter never shows you.
Is this before or after tax?
Before. Everything on this page is gross. What survives depends on your state and your withholding — that is what the state calculators compute, line by line and sourced.