How Many Work Hours Are in a Year?

The short answer: 2,080 hours

Payroll, HR and almost every salary calculator use the same number: 2,080 hours per year. It comes from a 40-hour week multiplied by 52 weeks. It is the number your employer divides a salary by to get an hourly rate, and the number benefits like PTO accrual are based on.

It is a convention, not a count of the days you actually work. A calendar year is 52 weeks and one day (two in a leap year), so the true number of weekdays moves between 260 and 262. 2026 and 2027 both have 261 weekdays (Monday to Friday).

How many working days are in a year?

Count the weekdays and remove the public holidays that fall on them. Here is the count with the 11 US federal holidays (the days federal offices close; many private employers follow the same list):

2027 has one more holiday inside the calendar year: New Year's Day 2028 falls on a Saturday, so it is observed on Friday, December 31, 2027. That is why 2027 has 249 working days and 2026 has 250.

Federal holidays in 2026

• Thu, Jan 1 — New Year's Day
• Mon, Jan 19 — Martin Luther King Jr. Day
• Mon, Feb 16 — Washington's Birthday
• Mon, May 25 — Memorial Day
• Fri, Jun 19 — Juneteenth
• Fri, Jul 3 — Independence Day (observed)
• Mon, Sep 7 — Labor Day
• Mon, Oct 12 — Columbus Day
• Wed, Nov 11 — Veterans Day
• Thu, Nov 26 — Thanksgiving Day
• Fri, Dec 25 — Christmas Day

Work hours after vacation and holidays

The 2,080 figure includes paid time off. If you want the hours you are actually at work, take out holidays and vacation. With 11 paid holidays and two weeks (10 days) of PTO, a full-time employee in 2026 works 1,920 hours: 2,088 weekday hours − 88 holiday hours − 80 vacation hours.

Your employer may give more or fewer holidays than the federal list — many private companies give 8 to 10. Use your own holiday calendar for an exact count.

Why 2,080 matters for your pay

To turn a salary into an hourly rate, divide by 2,080. A $52,000 salary is $25.00 an hour; $75,000 is $36.06. Going the other way, multiply the hourly rate by 2,080: $20 an hour is $41,600.00 a year. The salary to hourly calculator does this for any number of hours per week and lets you change the paid weeks.

Some employers use 2,088 hours (the weekday hours in a 261-day year) or 2,096 in a 262-day year. The difference is small — about 0.4 % — but it explains why two salary conversions can be a few cents apart.

Work hours per month

A month has 173.33 work hours on average (2,080 ÷ 12) — about 4.33 weeks. Single months have between 160 and 184 weekday hours, depending on how many weekdays they contain. Salaried staff are usually paid the same every month regardless.

Part-time years

Part-time years scale the same way: 20 hours a week is 1,040 hours a year, 30 hours is 1,560. The Affordable Care Act counts 30 hours a week — 130 hours a month — as full time for health-coverage rules, which is why many part-time schedules stop at 29 hours.

Work hours on other schedules

Not every full-time job is five 8-hour days. The yearly total depends on the hours per week, not on how they are spread over the days:

A 4/10 schedule has the same 2,080 hours as a regular week but 52 fewer commuting days. Twelve-hour nursing shifts usually add up to 36 hours a week, or 1,872 hours a year, and many hospitals count that as full time.

Biweekly pay: 26 or 27 paychecks

If you are paid every other Friday, most years have 26 paydays — 80 hours each, 2,080 hours in total. Every 11 years or so a year has 27. It happens when the first payday falls on January 1 or 2: in 2027 Fridays start on Fri, Jan 1, so a company paying on that cycle has 27 paydays in 2027 against 26 in 2026. Salaried employees then get a slightly smaller paycheck each time (salary ÷ 27), or one extra paycheck if the employer divides by 26.

Hours worked versus hours paid

Payroll usually counts paid hours: time worked plus paid holidays, vacation and sick days. Overtime, though, is based only on hours actually worked. A week with a paid holiday on Monday and 40 hours worked Tuesday to Saturday is 48 paid hours but no overtime under federal law, because only 40 hours were worked.

Work out your own number

1. Count the weekdays in the year (260, 261 or 262).
2. Subtract the holidays your employer gives that fall on a weekday.
3. Subtract your vacation and personal days.
4. Multiply by the hours you work per day. If your days differ, use hours per week × 52 and subtract holiday and vacation hours instead.

For example, a 37.5-hour week (7.5 hours a day) with 10 holidays and 15 vacation days in 2026: (261 − 10 − 15) × 7.5 = 1,770 hours at work.

Track your own hours

Use the time card calculator to add up a week of clock-in and clock-out times, and the PTO calculator to see how much paid time off you earn for each hour you work.