Hourly to Salary Calculator

How this is worked out

The conversion is a multiplication:

annual = hourly × hours per week × paid weeks

$28 an hour at 40 hours for 52 weeks is $58,240 — 2,080 paid hours. Going the other way, a $70,000 salary over 2,080 hours is $33.65 an hour, and over a 37.5-hour week it is $35.90. Which week your employer uses is not a detail; it is 6.7% of the answer.

The 2,080-hour figure is a convention. A year is 52.1775 weeks, so 40 hours a week is really 2,087 hours. Canadian payroll mostly runs biweekly — 26 pays a year — which is exactly why 52 weeks is used rather than the true figure. A semi-monthly payroll of 24 pays does not divide the same way, and the two produce different per-cheque amounts from the same salary.

Vacation is where the Canadian answer stops being arithmetic. Vacation pay is a percentage of earnings — 4% for two weeks, 6% for three in most provinces — so it is usually inside a salary and never inside a contract rate.

The freelance mode works backwards from the income you want to keep:

invoice = (income ÷ (1 − tax rate)) + overhead

rate = invoice ÷ billable hours

A worked example

Vacation is provincial, and so is the right answer

There is no national vacation entitlement in Canada. Employment standards are provincial for about 94% of workers, and the rules genuinely differ. Two weeks after a year of service is the common floor; most provinces move to three weeks after five or six years of service, Saskatchewan starts at three, and the federal sector reaches four weeks after ten years.

Vacation pay is expressed as a percentage of earnings rather than as a rate: 4% of wages corresponds to two weeks, 6% to three. For an hourly employee it may be paid on every cheque or accrued and paid when the vacation is taken, and both are lawful in most provinces provided the employee agrees in writing where required.

This is what makes an hourly-to-salary comparison slippery here. If your 4% is paid out with each cheque, your headline hourly rate already contains your vacation and your "salary equivalent" is not 52 weeks of work — it is 50 weeks of work and two weeks of accrued pay. Settle that before comparing two offers.

Statutory holidays, and why the count differs by province

Statutory holidays are provincial too, and the number ranges from five to ten paid days depending where you live. Federally regulated employees get ten. Ontario has nine; Alberta has nine general holidays; Quebec has eight statutory holidays; and which specific days qualify differs — Family Day exists in some provinces and not others, and Remembrance Day is a paid general holiday in most provinces but not in Ontario, Quebec or Manitoba.

For a salaried employee the days are simply paid. For an hourly employee, general holiday pay is normally calculated from average daily earnings over a preceding period, so it is not always the same as a normal day's pay. For a contractor it is nothing at all — a statutory holiday is an unpaid day, and there are up to ten of them.

That is two full weeks of the year, between vacation and statutory holidays, that a contract rate has to fund and a salary does not. The weeks-off field in the freelance mode is where that belongs.

Contracting: both halves of CPP, no EI, and the incorporation question

A self-employed contractor pays both the employee and the employer share of Canada Pension Plan contributions, where an employee pays one and their employer pays the other. Employment Insurance works the other way: self-employed people are not required to pay EI premiums and are not covered by regular benefits unless they opt in to the special-benefits programme, which has its own waiting rules.

Whether to incorporate is the other question, and it is not primarily about the rate. Incorporation can allow income deferral and access to the small business deduction, but it brings corporate filings, potential personal services business risk if you have a single client who directs your work, and professional fees that belong in the business costs field on this page.

The personal services business risk deserves naming. If the Canada Revenue Agency concludes you would reasonably be regarded as an employee of the client but for your corporation, the corporation loses the small business deduction and most expense deductions, and the tax outcome is considerably worse than either employment or normal self-employment.

Overtime thresholds differ, and so do the conversions built on them

The overtime threshold is 40 hours a week in British Columbia and Quebec, 44 in Ontario and Alberta, and Alberta and BC add daily rules on top. Alberta pays whichever of the daily and weekly calculations produces more — not both — and British Columbia counts only the first eight hours of each day toward the weekly total so the same hour is never paid twice.

This matters for salary conversion because a salaried employee in a non-exempt role is still owed overtime, and the rate it is paid at is derived from the salary. Divide the salary by the hours it is intended to cover, then apply the multiplier — which is the same arithmetic as converting a salary back to an hourly rate.

If your work regularly exceeds the threshold, the honest hourly comparison uses your actual hours rather than your contracted ones. A $70,000 salary is $33.65 an hour over 2,080 hours and $28.81 over a real 2,430-hour year, and only one of those figures is comparable to an hourly offer.

Assumptions and sources

Vacation entitlement

Provincial employment standards. Two weeks is the common minimum, rising to three with service in most provinces. Federal standards reach four weeks after ten years. Employment and Social Development Canada: https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development.html checked 2026-08

Vacation pay

4% of wages for two weeks of vacation, 6% for three, as set by each province's employment standards act.

Statutory holidays

Five to ten paid days depending on the province; ten in the federally regulated sector. Which days qualify also differs.

Overtime thresholds

40 hours in BC and Quebec, 44 in Ontario and Alberta, with daily rules in BC and Alberta. Recorded in assets/js/tax/work-2026.js with the provincial sources.

Arithmetic

hourlyToSalary, salaryToHourly and freelanceRate in assets/js/tools/work.js, verified in tools/test/work.mjs.

Not included

Federal and provincial income tax, CPP, EI and any provincial levies. The tax rate in the contractor mode is an estimate you supply.