How Many Work Hours in a Year

Of the 8,670 hours in a year, full-time employees (working 40 hours a week) work 2,080 hours annually before accounting for time off, sick days, and vacations. For both salaried employees and part-time workers alike, it’s vital to understand how many hours you spend working each year. Understanding your total annual work hours helps you better balance your work with the rest of your life, create a more effective schedule, and budget for future expenses. Of course, the only way to gain useful insights from this information is to ensure your numbers are accurate in the first place. That’s where we can help.

The Fair Labor Standards Act doesn’t define specific work hours, which means it’s up to each employee to figure out exactly how many hours they work each year. In this guide, we’ll break down how to calculate your working hours, covering a variety of workweek schedules and explaining the calculations you need to use for each one. Let’s get down to it.

Key Takeaways

• Calculating work hours per year will help you schedule your life around your work and establish a better work-life balance.
• Your total hours worked per year will vary depending on how many hours you work each week.
• There are 8,670 hours (52 weeks) in a year—if you work 40 hours per week, eight hours a day, every week, you would spend 2,080 hours working per year.
• Paid holidays, paid vacation days, and overtime hours should also factor into calculations for the number of hours you work per year.
• To calculate your working hours, you need to track your weekly work hours, add up your total time off for the year, multiply time off by hours worked per day, and finally subtract non-working hours from work hours to get your total hours worked for the year.
• Time-tracking software can greatly speed up the process of calculating annual working hours.

Table of Contents

• Working Hours in a Year (Weekly)
• Non-Working Hours in a Year (Weekly)
• How Do You Calculate Working Hours in a Year?
• Track Working Hours Efficiently with FreshBooks
• Frequently Asked Questions

Working Hours in a Year (Weekly)

If you work 40 hours per week, for all 52 weeks of the year, never work overtime, and never take any holidays or personal time off, you would work 2,080 hours per year—this is the average annual working hours for many. This is a good place to start when figuring out how many work hours there are in a year for full-time employees—but what if your schedule is different?

Because the Fair Labor Standards Act doesn’t define specific work hours for full-time or part-time employees, it’s up to you to determine how many hours you work each year based on your usual schedule. So if you don’t work a traditional 40-hour workweek, you can use this table to determine your total work hours per year based on common work schedules:

Hours Worked Per Week	Calculation	Total Working Hours Per Year
20	20 x 52	1,040
25	25 x 52	1,300
30	30 x 52	1,560
35	35 x 52	1,820
37.5	37.5 x 52	1,950
45	45 x 52	2,340
50	50 x 52	2,600
55	55 x 52	2,860
60	60 x 52	3,120

Note that these hours don’t account for any time off or holidays, so they likely won’t reflect your exact working hours per year. Based on your weekly schedule, these numbers give you a useful idea of how many hours you’ll spend at work.

Non-Working Hours in a Year (Weekly)

With your work hours calculated, you might wonder how much of your time is left over. There are 8,670 hours in a year, which includes the time you’ll spend sleeping, doing errands, pursuing hobbies, and anything else you might do outside of work. By calculating your non-work hours in a year, you can be more pragmatic about how you spend your free time, ensuring you have lots of time for days off and vacations, as well as maintaining a healthy work-life balance. 

To calculate your non-working hours in a year, simply take the total number of hours in a year (8,670) and subtract your work hours from it. Naturally, part-time workers will have fewer work hours per year. Here’s what it would look like based on the work schedules from before:

Hours Worked Per Week	Total Non-Working Hours Per Year
20	7,720
25	7,460
30	7,200
35	6,940
37.5	6,810
40	6,680
45	6,420
50	6,160
55	5,900
60	5,640

Again, these figures don’t account for any paid time off, so you’ll likely have even more non-work hours than are listed here.

How Do You Calculate Working Hours in a Year?

In addition to multiplying your weekly work hours by the number of weeks in a year, you’ll also need to factor in any time off when calculating hours worked in a year. This time off might include:

• Vacations
• Sick/mental health days
• Days where you work fewer hours than your regular shift
• Personal days
• Federal holidays

If you’re calculating your working hours for the year ahead, you might have to estimate how many days off you’re likely to take. If you’re calculating for the past year, it should be easy to get an accurate breakdown of your average working hours, provided you kept records of your time worked and time off. Here are the 5 steps to calculate your annual work hours:

1. Track Weekly Working Hours

First, you’ll need to figure out the total hours you spend working in a week. If your weekly hours are variable, it will be more time-consuming to do this step, since you’ll have to look at each week and individually add each one to get your total work hours for the year, or else estimate your total paid time by using your average hours worked per week. For the purposes of this guide, we’ll assume you’re scheduled to do a 35-hour workweek every week. 

If you use time-tracking software, this step is much simpler. You can look at the working hours for each week at a glance, and it will automatically factor in any paid holiday or other time you take off. Otherwise, you’ll have to refer to timesheets from your employer or simply already know your weekly working hours. For this example, we’ll say that you have a 35-hour workweek.

2. Multiply Weekly Working Hours by 52

With your weekly hours tracked, you’ll then need to multiply it by weeks of the year to get your first figure for annual work hours. There are 52 weeks in a year, so if you do a 35-hour workweek, you’d simply calculate it as follows:

35 hours per week x 52 weeks per year = 1,820 working hours per year

3. Calculate Time Off

You now have your initial number for your total work hours for the year, but it’s not complete. That’s because you still need to calculate additional non-work hours, which includes vacations, federal holidays, and sick days. 

According to the United States Department of Labor, employers aren’t required to pay employees for any time off, including sick leave and vacations. However, many jobs do provide paid sick leave and vacation pay. To calculate work hours per year for financial reasons (e.g., to budget for a large expense), you’ll need to figure out how much of your time off is paid (if any) and factor it into your calculations. Common categories for paid time off include:

• Vacation days
• Sick leave
• Paid public holidays
  • New Year’s Day (January 1)
  • Dr. Martin Luther King Day (Third Monday of January)
  • Presidents Day (Third Monday of February)
  • Memorial Day (Last Monday of May)
  • Juneteenth National Independence Day (June 19)
  • Independence Day (July 4)
  • Labor Day (First Monday of September)
  • Columbus Day (Second Monday of October)
  • Veterans Day (November 11)
  • Thanksgiving (Fourth Thursday of November)
  • Christmas Day (December 25)
  • Inauguration Day (January 20, every 4 years and only for federal employees in Washington, D.C.)

Determine how much time off you took for vacation days, sick days, partial days, and public holidays, and add them up to get your total days off. So if you took 3 days off for public holidays, 1 week off for vacation, 2 sick days, and had to leave work halfway through the day for a doctor’s appointment, you would have 12.5 non-working days.

4. Multiply Days Off by Hours Worked per Workday

Next, you need to convert your number of days off into hours off to arrive at an accurate number of work hours per year. To do this, simply multiply your days off by the number of hours you work in a normal workday. 

Continuing with our example of a 35-hour workweek, we’ll say you work 7 hours per day, 5 days per week. Simply multiply your days off by the amount of hours in a normal workday to calculate your non-work hours for the year, like so:

7 hours per workday x 12.5 non-working days = 87.5 non-working hours

5. Subtract Total Time Off from Total Work Hours

Now that you have both your working and non-work hours for the year, you simply need to do one more calculation to get your final number of yearly work hours. The calculation looks like this:

1,820 working hours per year – 87.5 non-working hours = 1,732.5 total working hours for the year

And just like that, you’ve calculated the exact amount of hours you spent working in the past calendar year. If you wanted to calculate your pay for that time (before taxes and deductions, and assuming all non-work hours were unpaid), you could simply multiply your total work hours for the year by your hourly wage. Alternatively, you can use this information for scheduling purposes, establishing a better work-life balance

Track Working Hours Efficiently with FreshBooks

If you’re ready to take the guesswork and troublesome calculations out of figuring out how many work hours are in a calendar year, FreshBooks is here to help. Our time tracking software is one of the best ways to track your time ongoingly, perfect for freelancers, business owners, or anyone else who doesn’t work the exact same amount of hours each week. 

People love FreshBooks time tracking for a few reasons, such as its simple user interface, accurate time tracking, ease of use when tracking yearly hours, and seamless integration with an entire suite of financial and organizational tools, FreshBooks is here to make life simpler for busy professionals. Try FreshBooks for free today!

FAQs On Work Hours In A Year

Still curious about how many working hours are in a year? Here are answers to a few of the most frequently asked questions:

How many hours does a full-time employee work in a year?

Full-time workers who work 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year will spend a total of 2,080 hours at work. Note that this figure does not include vacations, public holidays, or sick leave.

How many hours in a 40-hour work year?

If you work 40 hours per week every year, you would work for a total of 2,080 hours that year (not including any kind of time off, such as vacation time or sick leave). This leaves you 6,680 non-working hours per year.

Does 2,080 hours include holidays?

The working hours amount for a 40-hour-per-week worker (2,080 working hours per year) only includes holidays if your employer offers paid holidays. Since the Department of Labor doesn’t require employers to offer paid or unpaid time off for any holiday, this varies case-by-case.

Does 2,080 hours per year include holidays?

No, 2,080 working hours per year don’t include holidays. If you work 40 hours per week for all 52 weeks of the year, you would spend 2,080 hours at work per year. But because the Department of Labor doesn’t require employers to give time off, this number doesn’t include time off for public holidays.

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