2,080 hours - 52 weeks times 40 - is the industry shortcut. Nobody I know works exactly that shape. PTO exists. Crunch exists. “Optional” Friday meetings exist. I still use 2,080 as a first pass because it’s the common language on both sides of the offer conversation; just remember it’s a convention, not a confession of how you’ll actually spend the year.
Salary → implied hourly
$91,520 ÷ 2,080 ≈ $44/hr. If you’re routinely doing 47.5 billable-ish hours, the same salary is spread over 2,470 hours a year and the implied rate drops to about $37.05. Same paycheck, worse story - burnout has a mathy side.
Hourly → fake salary (useful anyway)
$52/hr × 2,080 = $108,160 “equivalent.” Add five hours of time-and-a-half every week: 5 × $52 × 1.5 = $390/week in OT pay → $390 × 52 ≈ $20,280/year on top of the straight-time stack, before taxes. Overtime rules aren’t universal - know if you’re even eligible.
Let the site do the boring division
The salary to hourly converter (USA) and hourly to salary converter (USA) exist because nobody should do 2,080 math at 11 p.m. while negotiating.
For take-home on the W-2 path, stack the paycheck calculator (USA) after you’ve picked a gross story. 1099 is a different animal - quarterlies, insurance, equipment - and deserves its own notebook, not a paragraph wedged in here.
Opinions I’ll own
Higher hourly with zero benefits and infinite admin isn’t automatically winning. Salaried with PTO and sane boundaries can be cheaper per real hour of life even when the headline rate looks lower.
State lines matter - CA and TX are not the same tax universe. We’ve got state-flavored paycheck tools in the directory if you need something closer to home.