How it works
An unpaid time off conversion translates an hourly wage into the annual income you will actually earn by counting only the weeks you work, not the calendar. Salaried offers quote a year-round figure; hourly workers who take unpaid vacations, seasonal breaks or unpaid leave see their real annual total fall below the headline multiplication of wage times fifty-two weeks. The arithmetic is direct: hourly rate times weekly hours times the weeks actually worked. A $24 wage at 40 hours looks like $49,920 across a full year, but two unpaid weeks cut it to $48,000 — and each individual week off carries a precise $960 price tag. The calculator surfaces three numbers most workers never compute: the true annual gross, the per-week cost of unpaid time, and the effective hourly rate once your wage is spread across all fifty-two calendar weeks — $23.08 in this example, not $24.00. That effective figure is the honest basis for comparing an hourly job against a salaried offer, because salary math implicitly assumes paid time off. It also reframes negotiations: asking when unpaid leave falls, whether it can convert to PTO, or whether a slow-season layoff week can be rescheduled is often worth more than chasing a modest raise.
Formula
Annual gross = hourly × hours/week × (52 − unpaid weeks) | Effective hourly = annual gross ÷ (52 × hours/week)
Tips
- Price unpaid leave before approving it — one week at $24/hr and 40 hours is a $960 decision.
- Spread unpaid weeks across quarters so no single month absorbs the whole income hit.
- Compare hourly jobs to salary offers using the effective hourly figure, not the raw wage.
- Ask whether unpaid days can convert to PTO or floating holidays before accepting the schedule.
- If leave is flexible, place it in slow seasons when missed hours cost the least.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I calculate annual income from an hourly wage with unpaid time off?
- Multiply the wage by weekly hours by the weeks actually worked: $24 × 40 × 50 weeks = $48,000 with two unpaid weeks, versus $49,920 for a full fifty-two. The $1,920 difference is exactly what the unpaid time costs, and the calculator above runs the same math for any wage, schedule and number of unpaid weeks.
- How much does one unpaid week cost an hourly worker?
- The weekly paycheck itself: hourly wage times weekly hours. At $24 and 40 hours that is $960; at $18 part-time with 25 hours it is $450. Salaried employees generally keep drawing pay during vacation, which is why unpaid time hits hourly budgets disproportionately hard.
- What is $24 an hour annually with 2 weeks unpaid?
- $48,000 — $24 times 40 hours times 50 worked weeks. Spread across all 2,080 calendar hours, the effective rate is $23.08, not $24.00. The full-year figure with no unpaid time would be $49,920, so the two weeks remove $1,920 of gross income.
- Do salaried employees ever have unpaid time off?
- Rarely for ordinary vacations — salary buys the expectation of continuous pay. Unpaid leave for salaried staff usually means formal FMLA leave, sabbaticals or furloughs. Hourly workers face unpaid time routinely through scheduling gaps, seasonal closures and PTO banks that simply are not offered.
- Is it better to take unpaid leave or cash out unused PTO?
- Using PTO preserves income and often accrues benefits; cashing out converts hours into a taxed lump sum. If the choice is unpaid leave versus borrowing to cover the gap, PTO almost always wins. Run both scenarios here, then compare against a payout estimate for the cash route before deciding.