Did 2021 feel like an especially long year? (no, not because of that!)
That’s because there were 261 work days – you worked 53 Fridays!
Ever wonder how many work days and work hours are in each year? Seems like a simple question, right?
And if you don’t need to be precise – it’s is.
In general, there are 52 weeks in each year and 40 hours per work day.
This equates to:
- 260 Work Days in a Year
- 2080 Work Hours in a Year
However, there are a lot of different exceptions to these general rules. Not every year has the same number of weekdays. Not every year has the same number of days (leap years).
While the general rule of thumb is often good enough, there’s an easy way to calculate the exact number of work days and work hours each year:
Table of Contents
Standard Year – 52 Weeks, 2080 Hours
If you work a corporate job, your company’s human resources department thinks about your work schedule as having 52 weeks and 2080 hours. If you have two weeks of vacation, that’s 2000 working hours and 80 hours of vacation, or paid time off (PTO).
This can help you calculate your hourly rate if you know your salary. Or vice versa.
If you make $50,000 a year, then your hourly rate is $25 an hour before taxes.
If you make $15 an hour, your annual income will be $30,000 per year.
It’s a quick rule of thumb you can use to quickly calculate those numbers.
Also, this assumes you work eight hours a day and only on weekdays (Monday through Friday). A lot of people don’t follow this schedule so these quick calculations won’t work in your case.
How to Quickly Count Work Days (Weekdays)
To quickly count the number of work days, you simply need to look at the first week of January and the last week of December. There are only 52 weeks in a year so there will always be a duplicate day between the two weeks.
That’s the 365th day and that year will have 53 of those days.
For example, if you look at the calendar for 2022, the day of the week that occurs in both the first week of January and the last week of December is Saturday. There are 53 Saturday in 2022.
So for 2022, we have 260 work days because the “repeat” day is a non-weekday – Saturday.
If you look at the calendar for 2021, the duplicate day was Friday so you had an extra work day in 2021.
The crazy one to see is 2020 when there were two duplicate days – Wednesday and Thursday. What’s going on!? That’s because 2020 was a leap year. So you had 53 Wednesdays and 53 Thursdays in 2020.
So for 2020, we had 262 work days.
Leap Year – 366 Days
Leap years are interesting because they add a day at the end of February. Depending on the year, this could be an additional weekend day or a weekday. To calculate your work days, you’ll need to look at the calendar and literally count the number of week days to really know.
Work Days in Each Year
Using our “first week in January and last week in December” rule, we know that:
| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 53 | 52 | 52 | 52 | 52 | 52 |
| Tuesday | 53 | 52 | 52 | 52 | 52 | 53 |
| Wednesday | 52 | 52 | 52 | 52 | 53 | 52 |
| Thursday | 52 | 52 | 52 | 52 | 53 | 52 |
| Friday | 52 | 52 | 52 | 53 | 52 | 52 |
| Total Work Days | 262 | 260 | 260 | 261 | 262 | 261 |
| Total Work Hours | 2096 | 2080 | 2080 | 2088 | 2096 | 2088 |
As it turns out, despite the rule of thumb being 52 weeks and 260 work days, the reality is that the average is higher because there are more weekday days (5) than weekend days (2). The duplicate day is more likely to be a weekday day than a weekend day!
Enjoy the next two years because they’re the shortest “work years” – we duplicate Saturday (2022) and Sunday (2023). Then 2024 is a leap year again and we have two extra work days.
Remember Holidays
Finally, there are 10 paid Federal holidays (bank holidays) and if your employer offers those, you can further reduce the number of work days you have. That will depend on your arrangement with your employer so our figures will exclude those because not everyone get these days off.
