$15 an Hour Is How Much a Year?

$15 an hour is $31,200 a year

Start from one week: 15 x 40 = 600. Multiply by the 52 weeks in a year and 600 x 52 = 31,200. $15 an hour is $31,200 a year at full time, before tax and before any week you do not work.

Every other number on this page is a slice of that total or a rerun of the same multiplication with different hours. A day is 8 hours at $15, a month is 31,200 divided 12 ways, and a 30-hour schedule is the same rate with 1,560 hours behind it instead of 2,080.

Two habits make the arithmetic fast. First, hold on to the weekly figure of 600, because most questions about hourly pay come down to the weekly figure. Second, remember that 2,080 hours is just 40 x 52, so the yearly number is always the rate times the hours you get paid for.

These are gross figures. Nothing here is spent on FICA, income tax or benefits, and the after-tax version of $15 an hour lives on its own page.

One rate, seven pay periods

The same 31,200 arrives in different sized pieces depending on how you slice the year. The table lists each slice at 40 hours a week.

Two details trip people up. A biweekly check of 1,200 is not half a month: 26 of them make 31,200, while 24 semi-monthly checks of 1,300 make the same year. And the monthly figure of 2,600 is an average, not what a weekly payroll deposits in any given month. A month with five Fridays brings 3,000 to a weekly worker, and a month with four brings 2,400.

Divide one step further and an hour is worth 0.25 a minute. That number sounds trivial until a shift gets cut 20 minutes early, which costs 5.00, or a time clock rounds four minutes a day, which costs about 260 a year at 260 workdays.

The 260-day and 2,087-hour shortcuts

Two shortcuts show up in payroll offices and job offers, and they do not agree with each other to the dollar.

The first is the workday count. Five days a week for 52 weeks is 260 days, so a $15 wage earns 120 a day and 31,200 across the year. It is the same calculation as the weekly one, just measured in days.

The second is the federal work year. Salary conversions in federal pay administration use 2,087 hours rather than 2,080, a convention explained in the OPM fact sheet on the 2,087-hour divisor. At $15 that year is 15 x 2,087 = 31,305, which is 105 more than the 2,080-hour version. The extra hours exist to absorb leap years, and an hourly worker only collects them by working them.

Months are the third place the counts disagree. The average month is 2,080 / 12 = 173.33 hours, or 2,600 at this rate. A four-week month is 160 hours and 2,400. Budget on four-week months and twelve of them pay 28,800, which leaves 2,400, exactly four weeks of pay, outside the plan.

Part-time at 20, 25, 30 and 35 hours

Half of the hourly jobs in retail, food service and school support sit below 40 hours. Each step changes the year by a fixed amount at a fixed rate.

Five hours a week is worth 75 weekly and 3,900 across the year, which makes two offers easy to compare. A 35-hour job at $15 pays 27,300. A 40-hour job at $13.50 pays 28,080, so the longer week at the lower rate wins by 780.

Shift length matters as much as the weekly total. Four 6-hour shifts make a 24-hour week and 18,720 a year. Five 5-hour lunch shifts make 25 hours and 19,500. The second schedule pays 780 more for one extra hour of work, because 25 hours beat 24.

Overtime at $22.50 past 40 hours

Hours past 40 in a workweek earn 1.5 times the regular rate, the standard the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division enforces under the Fair Labor Standards Act. At $15 the overtime rate is 22.50.

Ten overtime hours a week add 225 to each check and 11,700 to the year, which is a 37.5 percent jump in gross pay for 25 percent more hours. The effective rate across all hours worked falls as the overtime stacks up: 42,900 over 2,600 hours is 16.50 an hour, above the base rate but below the overtime rate.

The rule is weekly, not daily. A 10-hour Saturday inside a 38-hour week owes nothing extra, while a 45-hour week owes the premium even if the five extra hours were spread over five mornings.

Unpaid weeks, holidays and school-year work

Every figure so far assumes 52 paid weeks. Hourly workers are paid for hours worked, so a week off without pay comes straight out of the year.

A week costs 600, so two unpaid vacation weeks plus five unpaid holidays remove 1,800 and leave 29,400. The holidays are easy to forget because they feel like normal weeks until the check arrives.

School-year work compresses the same rate into fewer weeks. A 38-week position at 40 hours is 1,520 hours and 22,800, with the summer either unpaid or covered by a second job. Two 20-hour summer months add 2,400 to that year, for 25,200 total.

Reading a salary offer against $15 an hour

A salary sounds bigger than an hourly rate because it arrives as one number. The comparison only works after the hours are pinned down.

A $33,000 offer equals 15.87 an hour at 2,080 hours, a raise over $15. Run the same salary against 45-hour weeks and 33,000 / 2,340 = 14.10, which is a pay cut. The job title did not change; the hours did.

Unpaid lunch breaks hide in the same way. A shift scheduled 8.5 hours with a 30-minute unpaid break pays for 8, so someone on site 42.5 hours a week earns 600, or 14.12 per hour present. A 30-minute commute each way adds five unpaid hours a week and drops the rate per hour away from home to 13.33.

Benefits can flip the ranking. A $31,200 job with a 5 percent 401(k) match and paid health cover is worth more than a $34,000 job with neither, and the value of paid holidays shows up as weeks you are paid for without working.

Hours and raises to push past $31,200

Straight time stops at 31,200, so a bigger target needs more hours or a higher rate.

Hours first. Reaching 35,000 takes 35,000 / 15 = 2,333.33 hours, or 44.87 a week across 52 weeks. The 40,000 mark takes 2,666.67 hours, or 51.28 a week, and 45,000 takes 3,000 hours, or 57.69 a week. Past 40 hours the overtime premium shortens those weeks: a 40-hour base plus 7.52 overtime hours a week reaches 40,000.

The rate is the other lever. Each extra dollar an hour adds 2,080 a year at full time, so moving from $15 to $16 lifts the year to 33,280, and $17 lifts it to 35,360. At 20 hours a week the same dollar is worth 1,040, half as much, which is the hidden cost of a short schedule.

Compare the two routes honestly. Five overtime hours a week add 5,850 a year and cost 260 hours of free time. A one dollar raise adds 2,080 and costs nothing beyond the work you already do, so the raise is worth chasing first and the overtime is the fallback.