Estimated Salary For Jobs
The following information is not intended to be used as a substitute for actual compensation data. Instead, it’s meant to help you make informed decisions about the viability of a particular job.
If you’re looking for a career in the medical field, here are some of the most popular jobs and their estimated salaries:
Nurse: $60,000-$90,000 per year.
Physician Assistant: $70,000-$100,000 per year.
Registered Nurse: $40,000-$50,000 per year.
Estimated Salary For Jobs
What is estimated salary?
When a job posting does not include a salary, we estimate it by looking at similar jobs. When salaries are available, they are shown in our search results. Estimated salaries are not provided by the companies offering those positions and may vary from actual salaries.
1. Find your hourly wage
The first step should always be to determine your hourly wage. You may already know this, but you can also look at your paystubs to find out or ask your manager. Your hourly wage is what your employer pays you per hour before taxes, so be sure if you’re looking at your paystub that the number you’re using is pre-tax and by the hour.
Related: What Is a Good Hourly Wage, and How To Increase Your Hourly Wage
2. Multiply your hourly wage by your weekly hours
Once you have your hourly wage, you also need to know how many hours you work per week. If you work a job where your hours vary by week and want to determine future wages, look at your paystubs to see if there is an average you can use for your calculations. Otherwise, it’s challenging to get a clear picture of what you will make in the future. If you work the same amount of hours every week, however, it’s a little more straightforward. Whether or not your hours per week vary, this calculation will look like this:
Hourly wage x weekly hours = weekly wage
If you consistently work 25 hours per week and earn $12.50 an hour, this would be your calculation:
$12.50 x 25 = $312.50
Your weekly wage is an important number for the other calculations, so it’s a good starting point. You can also multiply your weekly wage by 52 to get your yearly wage.
3. Multiply your weekly wage by two
Now that you have your weekly wage, if you want to determine your biweekly (or every two weeks) wage, you can multiply the weekly wage by two. If your hours per week vary, keep in mind that the total may not be accurate for what you will earn as it can be difficult to predict future wages exactly, but you can use averages of previous weeks to come close. If you earn $312.50 per week like the example above, this is what your calculation for a biweekly wage would look like:
$312.50 x 2 = $625
Your biweekly wage in this scenario is $625. This can be especially helpful if you need to plan for upcoming bills or anticipate what your next biweekly paycheck is going to be.
4. Multiply your weekly wage by four
You can calculate your weekly wage in two ways. The first is to multiply your weekly wage by four, and the second is to multiply your biweekly wage by two. Either option should get you the same result. Using the example above, these are the options for this calculation:
$312.50 x 4 = $1,250
$625 x 2 = $1,250
If you have a variable schedule, it might be more accurate to look back on the last month and add up your total hours for the month and then multiply that by your hourly wage. This would look like:
30 + 26 + 21 + 25 = 102
$12.50 x 102 = $1,275
Whether you decide to find an average of your weekly hours over a long period or to calculate your future wages based on how many hours you worked last month, you can get a good look at what your earnings may be going forward.
Related: How Many Work Hours in a Year
5. Multiply your monthly wage by three
To determine your quarterly wage, you will use your monthly wage as it is usually an easier calculation than using a weekly wage. This is fairly straightforward and is calculated like this:
$1,250 x 3 = $3,750
By doing these calculations step-by-step, you have a better idea of what you earn over a wide variety of periods, which can help you make decisions about spending and competing job offers.
Unique calculations
Some situations are more complex to calculate and fall outside the steps above. Here are some of these unique calculations:
Previous wages
If you’re trying to determine what you made at a previous job, in the last year or over a set amount of time, your calculations are based on numbers you probably already have access to. For instance, if you work a variable amount of hours per week and you want to know how much you earned in the last six months, the most accurate way to calculate that is to determine how many hours you worked in that time.
The easiest way to find how many hours you worked each week is to consult your paystubs. There may even be a shortcut if you have those paystubs, as they likely list not just your hours and your hourly wage, but also your total pre-tax earnings that week. You can use that total on each paycheck to calculate what you made over that period.
If you’ve worked the same job for the last year and you want to know what you earned for the year, many paystubs also list your total gross earnings for the year. There are a lot of considerations for calculating total annual wages, however, and you may need to take other income into account, especially if you worked multiple jobs.
Related: How To Calculate Hourly To Yearly Pay
Semi-monthly wages
Semi-monthly wages usually refer to what you made over half of a month, and this can vary depending on the month and if you have a particular pay schedule you’re accounting for. For instance, if your employer pays you on the 15th of every month and the last day of every month because the amount of days per month varies, you may have a different amount of workdays to account for in each pay period.
To calculate your semi-monthly wages exactly, you can look at how many workdays are in each pay period and add up the hours you worked over those days to multiply by your hourly wage. If you are paid on the 15th of every month and want to know what your semi-monthly wages are for the second part of February, that might differ from your semi-monthly wages for the second part of March, as there are more days in March. It’s helpful to keep this in mind during any calculations.
Overtime
Overtime can make calculating wages more challenging in some ways. If you have just completed work for the week and you worked five hours of overtime and want to know what your pay for the week is before you get paid, you will need to calculate your regular hourly rate for your regular hours and then add in your overtime hours at the time and a half overtime rate.
For instance, if you make $14 per hour and worked 47 hours last week, you would do the following calculation:
($14 x 40) + ($21 x 7) = $707
Since overtime can be hard to predict, it may not be feasible to use overtime in calculating future wages unless your employer regularly offers a certain amount of overtime hours that you can rely on. Instead, it may be easier and more accurate to calculate your regular hourly wages only. Additionally, if you are using previous pay periods to help you calculate future wages, you may want to be sure that you’re not accidentally including overtime pay in your calculations instead of your standard hourly wage.
Related: Working Overtime? How To Decide if It’s Right for You (With Tips)
Examples of wage calculations
Here are a few examples of wage calculations in different scenarios:
Variable hours
Hina works part time at CNZ Groceries, where she’s paid $11 per hour. Her hours are at least 20 hours per week, but never over 30 hours. She would like to calculate her wages over a few periods, including weekly, biweekly and monthly to decide if she earns enough to rent an apartment alone. Since her schedule varies, she doesn’t want to count on having more money than she usually earns, but she also wants to have a realistic view of her earnings.
