True Wage Calculator
Your salary can look great on paper — until you include commute time, unpaid overtime, and other unpaid time. This tool calculates your true hourly wage with a clear breakdown.
Enter your details
Advanced options (optional)
Optional: only include benefits you want counted as “pay value.”
Applies a “stress tax” reduction to your effective wage. This is subjective — use if helpful.
Educational estimate only. No data is stored or sent anywhere — calculations run in your browser.
Your results
Methodology (what “true wage” means here)
- We start with your pay (salary or hourly), plus optional bonus and benefits.
- We compute how many weeks you actually work: 52 − paid weeks off.
- We count time you “pay” with: commute, unpaid overtime, unpaid breaks, and optional prep time.
- Optional: apply a subjective “stress tax” that reduces effective wage by 0–20%.
Why this matters
Two jobs with the same salary can pay very different “real” wages once you factor in commute time, unpaid overtime, and other unpaid time sinks.
If you’re new to the idea, read our guide on what a true hourly wage really means and how it’s calculated.
Commute time alone can quietly reduce your pay by weeks of unpaid labor each year. See our breakdown of how commute time affects your real pay.