How do you convert annual salary to biweekly pay?

Answer 1

If you get paid a salary, and you want to know the weekly amount of pay, you need to determine the number of weeks in a year. Sure, you might say "But that's 52 weeks". Wrong.

There are 365.25 days in a year (364 but then an extra day every 4th or leap year)

There are 7 days in a week.

So the number of weeks in a year is:

365.25/7 = 52.1785715285714 weeks

This is usually rounded to 2 decimal places: 52.18 weeks

Therefore, for a salary of 60 000 p.a., you would be paid 60000/52.18 = $1149.87 per week. The rounding of the final cent does not matter too much, because in the last pay period for the year, your employer should add a bit extra (or take a bit off) to make up the total salary of $60 000 for the year.

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Math vs Real Life

A payroll year is 52 weeks and more rarely 53 weeks. For biweekly paychecks, you will receive 26 checks a year and a 27th when the extra days add up to 14.

The company will divide 60,000 by 52 and pay you that amount per week, so it will be a little less in most years, and substantially more when your payroll year includes 53 weeks instead of 52 (every 5.6 years). You will not find a company that pays you different amounts to try to get you to exactly 60,000 for a given calendar year. That is not the way payroll works