£48 an hour is how much a year?

£48 an hour by hours worked per week

Yearly figures assume you are paid for 52 weeks, including paid holiday.

Compared with the minimum wage

£48 is £35.29 an hour more than the National Living Wage of £12.71 (for workers aged 21 and over from April 2026). Over a 37.5-hour week that is £1,323.38 a week more before tax.

Losing the Personal Allowance

At 45 hours a week your pay passes £100,000, where HMRC takes back £1 of your £12,570 tax-free allowance for every £2 over the line. Pay between £100,000 and £125,140 is effectively taxed at 60%, so extra hours at this rate are worth far less after tax.

Compared with typical UK pay

A 37.5-hour week at £48 pays £1,800 before tax. The ONS put median full-time pay at £766.60 a week in April 2025, so this is about 2.3 times the middle earner.

Student loan repayments

With a Plan 2 student loan you repay 9% of pay over £29,385, which on a 37.5-hour week at this rate is £481.61 a month. That drops your take-home to £4,922.17 a month. This pay is over the threshold for every other plan as well, so you would also repay on Plan 1 (£26,900), Plan 4 (£33,795), Plan 5 (£25,000) and a Postgraduate Loan (£21,000).

Overtime at time and a half

If your employer pays time and a half, overtime is worth £72 an hour before tax. Ten extra hours at that rate adds £720 to your gross pay, and you keep £417.60 of it after tax and NI on a full-time salary.

In Scotland

On a 37.5-hour week, a Scottish taxpayer on £48 an hour takes home £2,980.05 less a year (£61,865 in total), because Scotland has different Income Tax bands.

Hours a week before the £100,000 taper

At £48 an hour it takes about 40.1 hours a week to reach £100,000, where the Personal Allowance starts to shrink. That is £6,400 a year more than a 37.5-hour week pays. Regular overtime would take you there, and only the pay above the line is effectively taxed at 60%.

The next rate up

Moving up to £49 an hour adds £162.50 a month before tax and £94.25 after it on a 37.5-hour week. You keep 58% of that change because the whole difference falls in the higher-rate band, where tax and NI take 42p of each pound.

Guides and definitions

• High Income Child Benefit Charge: how it is worked out and cut (Guide)
• How to read your payslip: every line explained, with an example (Guide)
• National Insurance rates 2026/27: what you pay and how it works (Guide)
• Emergency tax code (An emergency tax code, marked W1, M1 or X, taxes each payday on its own, as if you were paid that amount every period of the year.)
• Marginal tax rate (Your marginal tax rate is the share of your next pound or dollar of income that goes in tax and deductions.)
• P60 (A P60 is the yearly summary of your pay and tax from one employer, due by 31 May if you work there on 5 April.)
• Personal Allowance (The Personal Allowance is the income you can earn each UK tax year before Income Tax starts: £12,570 for 2026/27.)
• Tax code (A UK tax code tells your employer or pension provider how much tax-free pay to give you; 1257L, meaning £12,570, is the most common.)

Salary after tax table · Take-home pay calculator

Nearby hourly rates

• £44 an hour (£5,027 a month after tax)
• £45 an hour (£5,121 a month after tax)
• £46 an hour (£5,215 a month after tax)
• £47 an hour (£5,310 a month after tax)
• £49 an hour (£5,498 a month after tax)
• £50 an hour (£5,592 a month after tax)

Full breakdown for £94,000 after tax · Salary after tax table · Take-home pay calculator

Common questions