Published by Salary by Metro · Updated October 12, 2026
Hourly wages and annual wages
If BLS published an annual wage, use it. If it published only an hourly wage, leave it hourly.
Most occupations in the May 2025 tables have both an hourly wage and an annual wage. The hourly figure is the wage rate. The annual figure is the yearly wage BLS estimated for the occupation. They answer different questions, and this site prints the one BLS published rather than converting one into the other.
Occupations that are not paid by the hour
Some occupations are reported on an annual basis only. Elementary school teachers, except special education, are the clearest national example in this release: the median annual wage is $63,970, and the hourly percentiles are not published. BLS treats that occupation as one that is not paid on an hourly basis. Multiplying a made-up hourly rate by 2,080 hours would invent a wage the survey did not estimate. The job page says the occupation is reported annually and leaves the hourly row as not available.
The reverse also happens. For some occupations BLS publishes an hourly wage and does not publish an annual wage. Those pages lead with the hourly median. They do not produce a yearly figure, and they do not run the take-home estimator, because that estimator starts from a yearly wage. You can type your own yearly figure into the take-home calculator if you know your hours and want an estimate.
Why 2,080 is the wrong shortcut
Two thousand eighty is 40 hours times 52 weeks. It is a full-time, year-round schedule, and it is not the schedule of every worker in an OEWS occupation. Teachers, pilots, seasonal work, and jobs with unpaid time off do not fit that product. Even for a job that does, the annual wage BLS published already reflects the survey's own method. Replacing it with hourly pay times 2,080 can disagree with the published annual wage. Where both exist, the page shows both and does not reconcile them with a homemade formula.
The technical notes for the May 2025 release describe how hourly and annual wages are estimated and which occupations are treated as annual-only. That note, not a rule of thumb, is the reason a cell is blank.