How these numbers are calculated

Every number on this site is produced by the same small set of formulas, and every external figure it compares against is listed below with its source and the date it was last checked. Nothing is estimated, smoothed or carried over from a neighbouring value.

The formulas

Yearly from hourly: the hourly rate multiplied by the paid hours in the year. By default 40 hours a week over 52 weeks, which is 2080 hours. That default is adjustable on every page; the pages do not hardcode it.
Hourly from yearly: the same division in reverse.
Monthly: the year divided by twelve. Not four weekly cheques — a month averages about 4.33 weeks.
Biweekly: every two weeks, 26 pay periods a year.
Semi-monthly: twice a month, 24 pay periods a year. This is a different amount from biweekly, and two months of the year carry a third biweekly payment.
Daily: the hourly rate over the hours in a working day, taken from the hours-per-week and days-per-week settings.
Overtime: hours past 40 in a workweek at 1.5 times the regular rate, which is the federal rule. There is no federal daily overtime and no federal double time.

Rounding

All arithmetic runs in whole cents rather than decimals, and rounds half away from zero only when a figure is displayed. Repeatedly multiplying and dividing the same amount across seven pay periods in floating point is a reliable way to produce $51,999.99 where the page promises $52,000.

What is deliberately not calculated

Take-home pay. Every figure here is gross. An after-tax number depends on the state, filing status, pre-tax deductions, local taxes and credits, and those move the result by thousands — so a single take-home figure would be wrong for most readers while looking authoritative. Rather than publish an estimate dressed as an answer, the site says what it knows and stops.

Cost of living. Whether a wage is enough depends on where it is earned and who depends on it. The site reports where a rate sits against the federal minimum and the national median, which are facts, and leaves the judgement to the reader.

Data sources

Federal minimum wage $7.25, in effect since July 2009. U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division.
Federal tipped cash wage $2.13, in effect since 1991. U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division.
Median usual weekly earnings $1251 for full-time wage and salary workers, second quarter 2026. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Usual Weekly Earnings. The hourly equivalent of $31.28 used on the comparison panels is that weekly figure over 40 hours. That is a derivation, not a separately published median hourly wage, and the pages say so.
Highest state minimum wage $17.13 (Washington), effective 1 January 2026.

Source links: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage, https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.nr0.htm, https://www.lni.wa.gov/workers-rights/wages/minimum-wage/

Corrections

If a figure here is wrong, it is wrong on hundreds of pages at once, because they all read from the same file. Corrections are welcome and are applied at that source rather than page by page.