$30 an Hour Is How Much a Year?

$30 an hour is $62,400 a year working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.

That is the arithmetic. What actually reaches your bank account is between $49,374 and $52,318 depending on which state you work in.

What you keep after tax

Single filer, standard deduction, no pre-tax contributions. Figures come from the same engine as the state calculators on this site.

The spread between Texas and Illinois is $2,944 a year for identical work — that is the cost of state income tax at this salary.

Every pay period

If you are paid twice a month rather than every two weeks, divide the annual figure by 24 instead of 26 — that gives $2,600 gross per cheque, and two fewer, larger paydays a year.

The 2,080-hour assumption

Every conversion above assumes 2,080 hours: 40 hours a week for all 52 weeks.

Almost nobody works exactly that. Take 15 days of paid leave and 10 public holidays and you work 1,880 hours while still being paid for 2,080. Your effective hourly rate against hours actually worked is $33.19, not $30.

That matters when comparing a salaried offer against contract work. A contract role at $30 an hour with no paid leave is not equivalent — you would need roughly $33.19 just to match, before accounting for benefits and self-employment tax.

If you work part-time the arithmetic changes directly:

How $30 an hour compares

The US median hourly wage is around $23.11, so $30 an hour sits above the median by about $6.89 an hour — roughly $14,331 a year.

Median figures hide enormous regional variation. $62,400 supports a very different standard of living in rural Georgia than in San Francisco, and the state tax column above is a small part of that difference compared with housing costs.

Overtime at this rate

If you are non-exempt, hours over 40 in a week must be paid at no less than one and a half times your regular rate — $45.00 an hour at this wage.

Your regular rate is not only your base wage. It includes non-discretionary bonuses, shift differentials and commissions earned that week, which pushes the overtime premium higher. The overtime rules guide covers how that calculation works and why salaried does not mean exempt.

Reducing what you lose to tax

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Contribute 5% at this salary — $3,120 a year — and your taxable income drops by that amount. In Georgia, that saves roughly $842 in combined federal and state tax, so the contribution costs you noticeably less than its face value in take-home terms.

Health premiums go further still, because they reduce Social Security and Medicare wages too. The pre-tax vs post-tax guide explains which deductions do what.

Related rates

Comparing offers? See $28 an hour and $32 an hour, or use the hourly to salary conversion table for every rate.

To model your own situation with real deductions, use the Texas calculator for a no-income-tax figure or the Georgia calculator for a flat-rate state.