How many hours are there in a year?
Knowing the average number of hours you work in a year can help you assess whether you have a good work-life balance. It can also help you determine your actual annual salary if you are someone who tends to work long hours. Learning the many reasons you might consider calculating the actual number of hours you work in a year can help you determine if you want to take the time to do this on your own.
In this article, we discuss why it is important to know how many hours are there in a year, how you can calculate the number of hours you work in a year and how you can calculate your hour per year.
Why is it important to know how many hours of work there are in a year?
There are actually a few reasons why it's good to know how many work hours there are in a year. Knowing this can help you:
Calculate annual income
If you are an hourly employee, knowing how many work hours are in a year allows you to calculate your annual salary. This can make budgeting and planning personal expenses easier.
Calculate hourly wage
If you are paid a salary and typically work more than 40 hours a week, you may want to calculate the actual amount you are earning per hour.
Plan extracurricular activities
By knowing the number of hours you work each year, you know how much free time you will have and can better plan other activities such as hobbies, exercise, volunteering and personal development.
Assess your work-life balance
Research shows that working long hours can actually decrease productivity and that employees benefit from taking time away from work. By calculating the number of hours you work in a year, you can better assess your own work-related habits and think about whether you need to reduce hours, take vacations, or disconnect more from work on the weekends.
How to calculate the number of working hours in a year
Here are the basic steps you need to follow to calculate the number of hours you work in a year.
1. Calculate your weekly hours
Start by determining the average number of hours you work per week. You may also want to consider the number of hours you work in a day, especially if you work more hours on some days than others. Add up all the hours you work every day of the week to find out how many hours you work per week on average.
For example, you might work eight hours a day on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and six hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, for a total of 36 hours per week on average. If you work eight hours a day, five days a week, you work 40 hours a week.
2. Multiply by 52
Take the average number of hours you work in a week and multiply that number by 52 to determine the total number of hours you would work in a year if you were not absent from work on vacation or holidays.
3. Calculate your paid time off
Then calculate the total number of hours you spend outside the office each year on paid time off (PTO). Depending on your company, all of your time off may be included in PTO or your organization may divide the time into sick leave and vacation time.
If you generally take all of your allotted sick and vacation time each year, you can calculate the total number of hours. Otherwise, you may want to include just your vacation time and perhaps an estimate of the amount of time you spend out of the office on sick leave.
For example: If you take three weeks of vacation every year and generally also take all five available sick days, multiply five by three to get the total number of vacation days, 15. You can add an additional five days for sick time, leaving you with 20 days in total.
Then, multiply those days by the number of hours you generally work each day. For this example, let's say you work eight hours a day, which is a total of 160 hours of paid time off with vacation and sick leave.
4. Calculate your paid vacation hours
Then count the number of paid vacations you receive from your employer. Multiply these days by the number of hours you work each day. If you get 10 paid holidays a year and work eight hours a day, you get 80 hours off for paid holidays.
5. Add your total time off
To find the total amount of time you receive outside of work, add the total number of PTO hours to the total number of paid vacation hours to determine the total number of hours you spend outside of work each year. Using the example above, if you receive 160 hours of paid time off in addition to 80 hours of paid holidays, you will receive a total of 240 hours of paid time off from work.
6. Subtract total time off from annual hours
In step two, you calculated the total number of hours you would work if you didn't take any time off. To find out how many hours you work in a year, subtract the total time you take off work, the amount you determined in step five, from the total amount you worked in step two. The formula looks like this:
(# hours per week x 52) – [(# PTO days + # paid holidays) x # hours per day] = Total hours in a year
Calculating Hourly Pay Per Year
If you are a salaried employee, you will receive the same amount per paycheck regardless of the number of hours you work. If you are someone who tends to frequently work more than 40 hours a week, you may want to calculate how much you are actually earning per hour.
To determine your average hourly wage, you can divide your annual salary by 52 and then divide that number by the number of hours you typically work per week.
For example: If you earn $50,000 per year and normally work 40 hours per week, to find your hourly rate you can divide $50,000 by 52 and then divide that amount by 40, which is an average annual salary of $24.04.
Total working hours per year
How many hours are in a year: There are an average of 2,087 work hours in a calendar year, based on year-to-year fluctuations in workdays over a 28-year period, rounded down to 2,087.143 hours. It is a common mistake to assume that there are 2,080 work hours in a year (40 hours multiplied by 52 work weeks), but there are not exactly 52 weeks (362 days) every year.
