Convert Bi-weekly Salary to Monthly Wages

Each year has 52 weeks in it, which is equivalent to 26 biweekly periods. Many employers give employees 2 weeks off between the year end holidays and a week of vacation during the summer, reducing the work year to 25 biweekly pay periods. If vacation is paid you would still count those weeks in your calculation, whereas if time off is unpaid you would subtract the time.

If you work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week & 50 weeks per year, that comes out to 2,000 hours per year. Quick conversion tips:

• Biweekly to monthly: To convert biweekly income to monthly income you would multiply your biweekly income by
  • 2 - if you work 48 weeks per year
  • 2.1667 - if you work 50 weeks per year
  • 2.3333 - if you work 52 weeks per year
• Biweekly to semimonthly: Each year has 12 months, thus 24 semimonthly periods in it. Multiply your biweekly earnings by
  • 1 - if you work 48 weeks per year
  • 1.0888 - if you work 50 weeks per year
  • 1.1667 - if you work 52 weeks per year
• Biweekly to annual: To convert biweekly income to annual income you would typically multiply your biweekly income by a number between 24 and 26. There are 52 weeks per year. Divide weeks by 2 in order to covert them into biweekly pay periods. If all time off is paid you would multiply your biweekly pay by 26 to convert it to the equivalent annual salary. If you have 2 unpaid weeks off you would take off 1 biweekly pay period. If you work 50 weeks a year & are paid ever other week then multiply those biweekly pay periods by 25 to calculate the associated annual income.
• Biweekly to hourly: Divide your biweekly income by how many hours you typically work in a your typical pay period. For example, if you work 8 hours a day & 5 days a week that is 40 hours per week. If you are paid every other week then multiply the 40 by 2 & get 80. So if you make $2,000 every other week, divide that amout by 80 and you would get $25 per hour.

If you work an uneven number of hours each week but a paid a flat amount for each week of work then you can sum together two weeks and divide by 2 in order to figure out your average hourly wage across the period. For example, doctors and nurses might work 3 12-hour shifts one week and 4 12-hour shifts the next week. Adding these two together one gets 36 + 48 = 84 hours worked each pay period. When entering data in the above calculator an employee could list their work days per week as 3.5.

Some employers who have mid-level management on salary often view getting management to work a bit longer as free labor. If your stated work week is 5 8-hour days but your boss also has you come in on most Saturdays then you could calculate your work week as having 6 days to calculate what the true hourly earnings are.

The following table lists the effective pre-tax annual wage associated for various biweekly incomes across years with 48 to 52 weeks of work (corresponding to 24 to 26 biweekly pay periods).