Hourly Paycheck Calculator

What this calculator does

Salaried people know their paycheck to the cent. Hourly people rebuild theirs every pay period, because hours move, overtime comes and goes, and the pay frequency decides how the year is sliced. This calculator answers the everyday version of the question: this rate, these hours, this week’s overtime — what lands in the next check?

It deliberately stops at gross plus a flat deductions estimate. Real withholding depends on your state and W-4, which is the take-home pay calculator’s job — that page does it properly for all fifty states.

The arithmetic

gross weekly = rate × regular hours + rate × 1.5 × overtime hours
annual gross = gross weekly × 52
per paycheck = annual gross ÷ checks per year

At $22 an hour, 40 regular hours and 5 overtime hours:

• Regular: 40 × $22 = $880
• Overtime: 5 × $33 = $165
• Weekly gross: $1,045, annual $54,340
• Biweekly paycheck: $2,090

Note what the overtime did: five extra hours — 12.5% more time — added 18.75% more pay, because each of those hours is worth 1.5×. That leverage is the whole economics of overtime, covered from the annual angle in the 2,080-hour rule.

Biweekly is not semi-monthly

The two schedules sound interchangeable and are not:

Frequency	Checks per year	Each check on $54,340
Weekly	52	$1,045
Biweekly	26	$2,090
Semi-monthly	24	$2,264
Monthly	12	$4,528

Biweekly pay arrives 26 times a year, so each check is about 8% smaller than a semi-monthly one for identical annual pay — and ten months contain two checks while two months contain three. Budgeting a biweekly income as if it were “twice a month” quietly overstates the normal month; the sane approach is to budget on two checks and treat the third-check months as arriving surplus.

Where overtime law actually sits

Federal law is simple in outline: non-exempt employees get at least 1.5× after 40 hours in a workweek. The details people miss:

• The workweek is the unit. A 50-hour week followed by a 30-hour week is 10 overtime hours, even though the average is 40. Employers cannot average.
• Some states add daily overtime. California is the prominent example — past 8 hours in a day qualifies regardless of the weekly total, and past 12 is double time. The overtime pay calculator handles the state rules.
• “Salaried” does not mean exempt. Exemption depends on duties and a salary threshold, not on how pay is quoted. Misclassification is one of the most common wage violations in the country.
• Overtime never costs you money. Brackets are marginal, so only the extra dollars see the higher rate. Withholding on a heavy-overtime check runs temporarily high because payroll annualises it; filing squares it up.

Budgeting on variable pay

Two habits make hourly income manageable:

Budget on the base, bank the overtime. Overtime is scheduled by someone else and vanishes without notice. A budget built on 45-hour weeks breaks the month the schedule drops to 40 — the calculator flags when overtime is carrying a large share of the check for exactly this reason.

Know your true monthly average. Multiply the weekly gross by 52 and divide by 12, rather than multiplying a biweekly check by two. The difference is about 8%, and it is the gap that makes budgets mysteriously fail in two-check months. The 50/30/20 calculator works from that monthly figure.

What this leaves out

Everything between gross and net, in detail: federal and state withholding, FICA, pre-tax benefits, retirement contributions. The flat deductions slider is a ballpark for planning, not a payroll simulation — for the real number by state and filing status, use the take-home pay calculator. And for converting the hourly rate itself to an annual salary with all its caveats, the hourly to salary calculator is the companion page.

For the governing rules, the Department of Labor’s overtime pages are the primary federal source, with the state-by-state tables covering the places where state law goes further.