£12.50 an hour is how much a year?
A year before tax
£24,375
At £12.50 an hour for 37.5 hours a week, you earn £24,375 a year before tax, or £2,031.25 a month.
Calculators
Hourly pay
What an hourly rate comes to a week, a month and a year.
e.g. £15 an hourPro rata
Your salary for part-time hours, and what you take home from it.
An hourly rate of £12.50 over 37.5 hours a week adds up to £24,375 a year, or £2,031.25 in an average month. Income tax and National Insurance leave £21,071.40 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This rate is now below the adult minimum, so it mostly applies to workers under twenty-one.
| Hours a week | A week | A month | A year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | £250.00 | £1,083.33 | £13,000.00 |
| 35 | £437.50 | £1,895.83 | £22,750.00 |
| 37.5 | £468.75 | £2,031.25 | £24,375.00 |
| 40 | £500.00 | £2,166.67 | £26,000.00 |
| Pay period | England, Wales and Northern Ireland | Scotland |
|---|---|---|
| A year | £21,071.40 | £21,111.07 |
| A month | £1,755.95 | £1,759.26 |
| A week | £405.22 | £405.98 |
How £12.50 an hour compares with the minimum wage
From April 2026 workers aged twenty-one and over must get at least the National Living Wage, and £12.50 falls short of it. A worker aged eighteen to twenty or an apprentice can lawfully be paid £12.50, because their minimum rates are lower. The page for the National Living Wage works through the adult rate in the same way.
The weekly pay at £12.50 is £468.75 before tax. The monthly figure of £2,031.25 is a twelfth of the year, so a month with five paydays for a weekly paid worker will not match it.
Tax on £12.50 an hour
The standard tax code gives £12,579 of annual PAYE free pay. The rest of £24,375 is taxed at 20%, which comes to £2,359.20. Employee National Insurance of £944.40 is worked out on pay above its own threshold of £12,570 at 8%.
A part-time week of 20 hours pays £13,000 a year. Only a few hundred pounds of that is above the personal allowance, so the tax and National Insurance on it are small. In Scotland the take-home at 37.5 hours is £21,111.07, slightly ahead of the figure for England because of the Scottish starter rate.
What a longer week adds
Two and a half more hours each week lift the yearly pay to £26,000, a round figure with its own salary after tax page. Take-home goes up to £22,241.40, from £21,071.40. Every extra hour is still inside the basic rate band.
Questions
How much is £12.50 an hour a year?
It is £24,375 a year for 37.5 hours a week, or £26,000 for 40 hours a week. Both figures are before tax and assume paid holiday, so every week of the year is paid.
What is £12.50 an hour after tax?
For a 37.5 hours week in England, the yearly take-home on £12.50 is £21,071.40, which is £1,755.95 a month. The figure uses the standard tax code with no pension or student loan.
Can an employer pay £12.50 an hour to an adult?
Not to a worker aged twenty-one or over, because the National Living Wage from April 2026 is higher than £12.50. Younger workers and apprentices have lower legal minimums, so this rate is allowed for them.
Nearby rates
The main figures assume 37.5 hours a week and 52 paid weeks, including paid holiday. They are whole-year estimates for 2026/27, with category A National Insurance and a tax code based on the allowance available at this income. No pension or student loan is included. Scotland is shown separately from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The full statutory Personal Allowance is £12,570. The tax code used for this estimate gives £12,579 of annual PAYE free pay, including any reduction in the allowance due to income. Your contract determines your paid hours and weeks. Annual totals and rounded monthly or weekly figures can differ by pennies.