The number on your offer letter divides pay by scheduled hours. This calculator divides what you actually keep by every hour your job actually takes — commute, prep, and unpaid overtime included.
What is a real hourly wage?
The wage on your offer letter divides your pay by your scheduled hours. But a job takes more than scheduled hours: you commute to it, dress for it, answer messages after hours, and spend money you wouldn't otherwise spend. Your real hourly wageis what's left of your pay after work-related expenses, divided by every hour the job actually consumes.
The formula
- Nominal wage = annual pay ÷ (paid hours per week × weeks worked)
- Real wage = (annual pay − work-related expenses) ÷ (paid hours + commute + prep + unpaid extra hours, per year)
How to use the result
The real wage is a comparison tool. A $70,000 job with a 90-minute round-trip commute can pay less per hour of your life than a $62,000 job ten minutes away — this calculator makes that visible. Use it to compare offers on equal footing, to put a dollar figure on remote work when negotiating, and to sanity-check purchases: an item's price divided by your real wage tells you how many hours of your life it costs.
Estimates are only as honest as the inputs. Track your actual commute door to door for a week, and glance at a month of card statements for work-related spending, before trusting the output.
Frequently asked questions
- Should I enter my gross or take-home pay?
- Both are useful for different questions. Use take-home pay to see what an hour of your life actually buys you. Use gross pay when comparing two job offers, since taxes will differ by location and situation.
- Why count commuting and getting-ready time?
- Because you wouldn't spend those hours otherwise. If a job requires them, they are part of the price you pay to earn the salary — leaving them out overstates what the job pays you per hour of your life.
- What counts as a work-related expense?
- Anything you spend only because of the job: commuting costs, parking, work clothes, lunches you buy near the office, tools or dues your employer doesn't reimburse, and childcare that covers your working hours.
- My real wage came out much lower than my salary suggests. Is that normal?
- A meaningful gap is common, especially with a long commute. The point of the number isn't to alarm you — it's to give you an honest baseline for decisions like negotiating remote days, moving closer to work, or comparing offers.