Working Hours in a Year

Where 2,080 comes from, and why it is slightly wrong

Multiply 52 weeks by 40 hours and you get 2,080, the number embedded in most salary arithmetic. The US Office of Personnel Management points out the flaw: 52 weeks is 364 days, and a calendar year is 365 or 366, so a real year can contain more paid workdays than the formula allows. A 1981 study found that across a 28-year cycle, the period after which the calendar repeats, there are on average 2,087 work hours per year. The breakdown is 4 years with 262 workdays, 17 years with 261, and 7 years with 260. Federal hourly rates have been computed on the 2,087 divisor since it was made permanent in 1986.

What a year looks like after time off

Gross capacity is not available capacity. Take the 52-week year, remove three weeks of vacation and two weeks of public holidays, and 47 working weeks remain, or 1,880 hours at 40 a week. That is the number that matters for planning, and it is 10 percent below the headline 2,080 before a single sick day, training day or slow week. Caps sit above it rather than near it: in the UK the statutory limit is 48 hours a week on average over 17 weeks, which is roughly 2,500 hours a year if sustained, and workers can opt out of it.

Hours worked and hours sold are different numbers

For anyone billing by the hour, the gap between the two is the whole story. Yale Law School's Career Development Office publishes a worked example that makes it concrete: a lawyer at the desk from 8 in the morning to 6 in the evening has ten hours, loses an hour to lunch, half an hour to two short breaks, half an hour to reading and correspondence, and half an hour to meetings and continuing education, and bills 7.5. Five days of that is 37.5 billed against 50 at work. Held for 47 weeks, that is 1,762 billable hours, against stated law firm targets that the same document places between 1,700 and 2,300.

Which number should you use?

Use 8,760 when you are reasoning about the whole year, including sleep, and want the honest denominator. Use 2,080 when you need the conventional salary divisor other people will recognize. Use 2,087 when you are matching US federal pay arithmetic, because that is the figure written into the rule. Use 1,880 or your own equivalent when you are planning capacity, because it reflects the year you will actually have. And use your own measured billable total, not a target, when you are pricing, because the difference between hours at work and hours sold is a property of how your days go rather than a number you can decide in advance.

In short

• 8,760 hours in a 365-day year, 8,784 in a leap year.
• 2,080 assumes 52 weeks of 40 hours, which is a 364-day year; US federal pay uses 2,087, the 28-year average.
• 47 working weeks at 40 hours is 1,880, about 10 percent below the headline figure before any sick days.
• Hours at work and hours billed diverge sharply: a published Yale example shows 50 at work producing 37.5 billed.
• Pick the number for the job: 2,080 to be recognized, 2,087 to match US federal arithmetic, 1,880 to plan.

Related guides

• What Are Billable Hours?: Billable hours are the hours a client is charged for, recorded against a specific matter or project and usually logged in tenths of an hour.
• Setting a Consulting Day Rate: A day rate is an hourly rate multiplied by the billable hours actually in a day, not by the hours you are at the desk.
• How to Run a Time Audit: A time audit is one week of recording what you actually do, then reading the totals.

Sources

• US Office of Personnel Management: Computing Hourly Rates of Pay Using the 2,087-Hour Divisor
• Yale Law School Career Development Office: The Truth About the Billable Hour
• GOV.UK: Maximum weekly working hours