The two hourly figures
A $62,400 salary over 40-hour weeks is $30.00 an hour across 52 paid weeks (2,080 hours). If two of those weeks are paid leave and the rest are worked, the same salary is $31.20 for each of the 2,000 hours actually worked.
Both numbers are correct; they answer different questions. Use the 52-week figure to compare pay rates, and the hours-worked figure to compare against a contractor, freelancer or overtime rate.
The page keeps the two apart rather than averaging them, because either figure on its own can mislead: quoting the paid-weeks rate against a contract silently discards the leave, while quoting the worked-hours rate against a salary ignores the weeks you are paid not to work. Both are printed, and the difference between them is the value of the paid leave they straddle.
Hourly to salary
Going the other way, annual pay is the hourly rate times hours per week times weeks paid. At $30 an hour for 40 hours across 50 working weeks, that is $60,000 a year.
The same $30 an hour paid for 52 weeks is $62,400. That difference is exactly the value of paid leave, which is why an hourly job and a salaried job at the same nominal rate rarely pay the same.
The page prices that leave directly: it shows the paid weeks not worked and multiplies them by the hourly rate and the hours per week, so the gap between the two annual totals is a number to see rather than a fact to infer. The same annual pay spread over more paid weeks always comes out to a lower hourly figure.
What this conversion ignores
Tax, retirement contributions, health insurance premiums, commuting costs and unpaid overtime are all excluded. So are benefits that only salaried roles receive, such as employer retirement matches or paid parental leave, and the instability of hourly schedules.
For a like-for-like comparison, add the value of benefits to the salaried figure and subtract unpaid time from the hourly one, then compare the annual totals.
Both figures are gross pay, so neither is take-home: no tax, no retirement or health deductions and no unpaid overtime are folded in. The honest comparison adds the value of benefits to the salaried side, subtracts unpaid time and non-billable hours from the hourly side, and compares annual totals.
Which of the two figures to use
The 52-week figure is the one to quote when comparing rates: it is what a job advertises, what payroll pays and what a lender reads. The hours-worked figure is the one to use in a decision - against a contract rate, against overtime, against a second job - because those are paid for hours delivered rather than weeks on the calendar.
Neither is take-home pay. Tax, benefit contributions and unpaid overtime sit outside both, and a salaried role with health cover and a retirement match is worth more than its hourly equivalent alone suggests. An estimate, not a return, and not tax advice.
From an hourly quote back to a salary
Going the other way, from an hourly quote into a salary you can compare, reads the same two numbers backwards. A $35 an hour contract at 40 hours across 50 weeks is $70,000 of gross billings rather than $72,800, because two weeks of the year are never billed at all.
For a contractor the gap to a salaried employee on the same nominal rate is wider than paid leave alone. Self-employment tax adds 15.3% on top of income tax where an employee splits that bill with an employer, there is no retirement match and no subsidized health cover, and the hours you can bill are never all the hours you work - 70% to 80% utilization is a normal planning figure, with the rest going to admin, quoting and unpaid gaps.
The rule of thumb that survives all of that: take the hourly rate, multiply by the hours you will actually bill in a year, then take off roughly 25% to 30% for tax and overhead before comparing it with a salary. That is the same arithmetic this page runs in the other direction, with the paid-leave value priced as a separate line.
Danfio