Return trip. Petrol, parking, train or bus fare.
Total both ways. UK average is about 58 minutes.
52 minus your holiday and bank holidays. 46 is typical for 28 days off plus bank holidays.
Your salary tells you what the job pays. It doesn't tell you what each hour of your life is worth once the job's hidden demands are counted. That's what the true wage does, and it's the same thing as your real hourly wage.
It starts with your take-home pay, subtracts the money the job costs you, then divides by all the time the job takes. That time isn't just your contracted hours. It's your commute and any unpaid overtime too. The result is a single hourly figure you can hold up against any other role, office, hybrid or remote.
This is why two jobs on the same salary can feel completely different. A role with a long commute or a habit of late finishes gives you less per hour than a slightly lower-paid job that leaves you alone at 5pm.
The formula is simple:
True wage = (take-home pay − yearly work costs) ÷ total annual hours
Total annual hours means your contracted hours, plus both-way commute time on each office day, plus unpaid overtime, multiplied by the weeks you actually work in a year. Work costs cover travel spend and any recurring expense the job forces on you: season tickets, parking, work lunches you wouldn't otherwise buy, and so on. Change the working-weeks box to match your own holiday, and the number updates straight away.
Five office days, 45 minutes each way, £250 a month in travel, plus four unpaid overtime hours a week. Take-home for 2026/27 in England is roughly £32,320. Annual travel cost: £3,000. Total weekly hours: 37.5 contracted + 4 unpaid + 7.5 commuting = 49 hours, which over 46 working weeks is about 2,254 hours.
True wage: (£32,320 − £3,000) ÷ 2,254 = about £13.00 an hour
No commute, no travel spend, same four unpaid overtime hours a week. Take-home is roughly £29,440. Total weekly hours: 37.5 + 4 = 41.5, which over 46 weeks is about 1,909 hours. With no costs to subtract, the maths is just take-home over hours.
True wage: £29,440 ÷ 1,909 = about £15.40 an hour
Role B pays £4,000 less on paper but is worth roughly 18% more per hour of your life. That's the whole point. Once you turn salary, commuting, unpaid time and costs into one hourly number, the "better" job isn't always the one with the bigger salary. Plug both roles into the calculator above and you'll see the gap for yourself.
Commuting hits your true wage twice. It costs money, and it eats time you're not paid for. Three office days with a 40-minute journey each way adds roughly 184 unpaid travel hours across a 46-week year, before you've spent a penny on fares or fuel. A remote role on the same salary hands all of that back.
The Department for Transport puts the average one-way commute in Great Britain at around 29 minutes. At three office days over 46 weeks, that typical commute alone is about 133 unpaid hours a year. Unpaid overtime works the same way: every extra hour raises the time you give the job without raising your pay, so your true wage slips even when your salary doesn't move.
We've put the full effect into one table: our data on the hidden cost of commuting shows how each commute length drops the median earner's real hourly pay, from £18.33 with no commute down to £11.70 on a 60-minute-each-way trip.
When you're totting up what the job costs you, the usual culprits are:
Hybrid and remote workers sometimes get perks that offset costs, a broadband allowance or subsidised lunch. Those count in your favour, so knock them off your daily commute cost before working out the hourly figure.
Work pattern moves your true wage through time and money at once. Remote strips out commute hours and travel costs entirely. Office adds both. Hybrid lands in between, and the effect scales with how many office days you do and how far you travel.
For the same salary, dropping from five office days to two usually saves 100 to 200 commuting hours a year and a few hundred pounds in fares, which can shift your true wage by £1 to £3 without any pay change. And when salaries differ, a remote job at 90% of an office salary often wins on real hourly pay once the time and cost savings are counted.
Scotland uses different income tax bands, which changes take-home pay and therefore your true wage at the same salary. Choose Scotland in the region dropdown above to apply the correct rates. The commute and overtime inputs work exactly the same.
Want to add a student loan or pension to the take-home first? The main salary calculator handles both and unlike most basic tools it factors in all five student loan plans. You can also convert between salary and an hourly figure on the hourly wage calculator.
The questions people ask most about working out what they really earn.
It's your take-home pay divided by all the hours the job actually takes, including your commute and unpaid overtime. It's usually lower than your contract's hourly rate, because commuting and extra hours are time you give to work without being paid for it.
Take annual take-home pay, subtract yearly work costs like travel and parking, then divide by total annual hours (contracted + commute + unpaid overtime, times the weeks you work). For example, £32,320 take-home minus £3,000 travel, over 2,254 hours, is about £13.00 an hour. The calculator above does all of that for you.
Not legally, but for judging what you really earn it should. It's unpaid time the job requires, and you'd have it back if the role were remote. Counting it shows the true cost of a job in time, not just money.
Often, yes. A £36,000 remote job with no travel can beat a £40,000 office job with a long commute and £250 a month in fares, once you count the hours and money the office job takes from you.
Compare the true wage of the commuting role against a closer or remote option. If the longer commute drops your real pay below the nearer job, the extra salary isn't covering the time and cost. Cutting from five office days to two typically saves 100 to 200 hours a year.
The ONS median full-time salary is £40,911 (ASHE, April 2026), roughly £21 an hour gross for a 37.5-hour week. After tax that is about £19 an hour over 46 working weeks, before any commute. Commuting and unpaid hours pull it down from there.
We use primary UK data so you can check the figures. Tax and take-home estimates use confirmed 2026/27 HMRC rates.
Worked examples are illustrative estimates for 2026/27 using standard PAYE assumptions (tax code 1257L, no student loan or pension unless stated). Your own figures depend on your tax code, region and circumstances. This is general information, not financial advice.