Wage Calculator NZ

How the hourly-to-annual conversion works

The standard conversion New Zealand employers use for a full-time role is 40 hours a week across 52 weeks, which comes to 2,080 hours a year. Multiply your hourly rate by 2,080 and you have your annual gross salary equivalent, before any tax is taken out.

Working fewer hours scales this down directly. Someone on 20 hours a week is working exactly half of a standard full-time week, so their annual figure is exactly half of the full-time equivalent at the same hourly rate. The calculator above handles this automatically: change the hours per week field and every other figure, weekly, fortnightly, annual and take-home pay, recalculates immediately.

Common hourly rates, converted

All figures below assume a standard 40-hour week (2,080 hours a year) and are gross amounts, before tax, the ACC levy or KiwiSaver.

New Zealand's minimum wage is reviewed and updated by the Government each year, so rather than repeat a figure here that can go out of date, check the current adult and starting-out rates directly at employment.govt.nz before relying on a specific number. Whatever your actual rate is, enter it into the calculator above for an up-to-date conversion.

Part-time and variable hours

Not everyone works a flat 40-hour week, and the calculator is built to handle that. Selecting "Hourly" as the pay period and entering your usual weekly hours, whether that's 20, 25, 30 or any other number, scales every figure to match. This is particularly useful for comparing two part-time roles at different hourly rates and different hours, where the higher rate isn't always the higher weekly or annual total.

If your hours genuinely vary week to week, the most accurate approach is to use your average hours over a typical month, or to check a specific week's figure using that week's actual hours.

Casual work and variable rosters

Casual and zero-hours employees don't have a fixed weekly hours figure to rely on, since rostered hours can change from week to week. For these roles, the most useful conversion usually runs the other way: take a specific week's actual hours and multiply by your hourly rate to check that week's gross pay, rather than trying to force a single "annual salary" figure that assumes consistent hours.

If your hours vary but follow a rough pattern, for example alternating between a busier and a quieter week, averaging your hours over a typical four-week period before entering them into the calculator above will usually give a more realistic estimate than using either extreme on its own.

From hourly rate to take-home pay

Converting an hourly rate to an annual figure only gives you the gross amount. To see what actually lands in your bank account after PAYE tax, the ACC levy and KiwiSaver, either use the hourly option directly in the calculator above, or convert to an annual figure here first and then check it against the take-home pay calculator, which is framed entirely around your net pay. If you want to see the income tax portion on its own, separate from ACC and KiwiSaver, the tax calculator breaks that down by bracket. For the full picture in one place, the main salary calculator covers PAYE, ACC, KiwiSaver and student loan together.

Wage versus salary: what's the difference?

A wage is normally quoted as an hourly (or sometimes daily) rate, and pay varies with the number of hours actually worked in a period. A salary is a fixed annual figure, usually paid in even instalments regardless of exactly how many hours are worked in a given week. Both are taxed the same way under PAYE, the difference is only in how the gross figure is calculated before tax, hours multiplied by rate for a wage, or a fixed annual amount divided by pay periods for a salary.