How Many Hours in a Year Are There? [In-Depth Guide]

Can you tell me how many hours you spend working each year? The question of how many hours in a year there are is more than just idle curiosity. For a lot of people, it’s very important to how they get paid and how they work. Here, we’re going to make sure you have no doubts as to how many hours and even minutes there are in a year, regardless of what calendar you go by and whether it’s a regular year, leap year, or topical year.

Aside from going over the crucial facts that answer the question, we’re going to look at the definitions of different calendar years and clear up a few questions people have about it, too, such as how many hours in a week and workdays in a month there are.

How Many Hours Are in a Year?

In order to answer the question of how many hours there are in a year, we need to be specific about which kind of year we are talking about. Most of the world uses the Gregorian calendar. In this calendar, there are 365 days on a common year (or mean year,) and 366 days every leap year. To be technical, there are 365.2425 days every year in the Gregorian calendar, but we use leap years every four years to convert it and make it easy to follow.

Each day has 24 hours, so the conversion ratio is simple:

• Every Common Year: 24 hours x 365 days = 8,760 hours
• Every Leap Year: 24 hours x 366 days: 8,784 hours

There is also what is referred to as the tropical year, or the Sidereal year, which is how long, specifically, it takes the sun to make its way back to the same position relative to the cycle of the seasons, as experienced from the earth. How many hours are in a year for this type? This year is 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes 46 seconds, or 8765.82 hours. Of course, this measurement isn’t commonly used.

There is also the Julian calendar, which was the calendar used from roughly 46 BC to 1582. It is quite similar to the Gregorian calendar but, while the Gregorian calendar has 665.2425 days a year, the Julian calendar has 365.25 days a year. The Julian calendar had the same number of hours per common year and leap year, the Gregorian calendar is just more specific to make leap years more accurate.

How Many Minutes in a Year Are There?

There are 60 minutes for each hour, meaning that you simply need to multiply the number of days per year to find out how many minutes a year there is. As such:

• Common year: 8,760 hours x 60 minutes per hour = approximately 525,600 minutes
• Leap year: 8,784 hours x 60 minutes per hour = approximately 527,040 minutes
• Tropical year:  8765.82 hours x 60 minutes per hour = approximately 525,949 minutes

How Many Working Hours in a Year Are There?

Aside from simple curiosity, it’s important to calculate the number of working hours in a year for a lot of people. For instance, an hourly employee who gets paid by billable hours might want to know how much they can expect to get paid annually, so they will want to know how many hours in a work year there are.

There are 365 days on the average year, with 104 of those days being weekends, so when it comes to how many weekdays in a year there are, the answer is 255 weekdays or working days. How many work hours in a year there are depends on how many hours a person works each day.

• The average person works 8 hours a day. As such, 8 x 255 comes out to 2040 working hours per year. On the median wage of $20.17 an hour, this comes out to an annual pay of $41,146 a year.
• For people who work 6 hours a day, 6 x 255 comes out to 1530 labor hours in a year. On the median wage of $20.17 an hour, this comes out to a yearly income of $30,860 a year.
• For those who work 4 hours a day, 4 x 255 comes out to 1020 working hours per year. On the median wage of $20.17 an hour, this comes out to a salary of $20,573 a year.

Full-time workers receive paid time off (PTO). In the US, the average employee receives 10 days of paid vacation time each year, which means that the answer to how many work hours in a year minus holidays there are is roughly 245 days. This includes vacation days, but not sick time. Of course, benefits differ from different employer rules and workplace types too.

Why It’s Important to Know How Many Hours in a Year Are Spent Working

There are plenty of tools that make good use of the work hours you calculate from a year, such as employee scheduling software, accounting software, time-tracking software for employees, and invoicing software. You can make use of the work hours per year to figure out billing and pay for each of these.

Conclusion

There are 8,760 hours a year on every common year, and every 366 days every leap year, which comes on every year that is divisible by four. This is all according to the Gregorian calendar, which is the calendar used by the vast majority of the world today. This comes down to approximately 525,600 minutes every common year and approximately 527,040 minutes every leap year.

As for working hours, this depends on how much you work each day, but for the person who works the average 8 hours a week, every weekday, with weekends off, there are 2040 working hours per year. Hopefully, the information above has answered any questions you might have about how many hours there are in a year.