£12.71 an hour is how much a year? £24,784.50 at 37.5 hours (2026/27)

£12.71 an hour by hours worked

The annual figure depends entirely on contracted hours, so the table shows the four most common UK working weeks. Every number is the hourly rate multiplied by weekly hours and then by 52 weeks — the standard basis payroll uses, because paid annual leave is included in the 52.

Hours a week	Hours a year	A year	A month	A week	A day (5-day week)
30	1,560	£19,827.60	£1,652.30	£381.30	£76.26
35	1,820	£23,132.20	£1,927.68	£444.85	£88.97
37.5	1,950	£24,784.50	£2,065.38	£476.63	£95.33
40	2,080	£26,436.80	£2,203.07	£508.40	£101.68

Monthly = annual ÷ 12. Weekly = hourly × weekly hours. Daily assumes hours spread evenly over five days. Overtime, unsocial-hours premiums and tips are extra.

How the £24,784.50 is worked out

Full-time in the UK most commonly means 37.5 paid hours a week (7.5 hours a day with an unpaid lunch). Multiply £12.71 by 37.5 to get £476.625 a week — payroll rounds this to £476.63 — and then by 52 weeks for £24,784.50 a year. Dividing by 12 gives the monthly figure of £2,065.38. Sites that quote £24,785 are simply rounding to the nearest pound.

Two things move that number in practice. First, a year is actually 52.14 weeks (52.29 in a leap year), so someone paid weekly receives 52 or 53 pay packets depending on where the pay day falls, and a 53-week year adds an extra £476.63. Second, a salaried employee on the National Living Wage is often paid a round annual figure such as £24,800; that is fine as long as the salary divided by the hours actually worked never drops below £12.71 in any pay reference period¹.

If your contract states an annual salary rather than an hourly rate, reverse the sum to check it: £24,784.50 ÷ 52 ÷ 37.5 = £12.71. Anything below that for a 37.5-hour week is an underpayment of the National Living Wage from 1 April 2026.

Take-home pay on £12.71 an hour (2026/27)

Gross pay is not what lands in the bank. For 2026/27 the first £12,570 is tax-free under the standard 1257L code, income tax is 20% on the rest up to £50,270², and employee National Insurance is 8% on earnings between £12,570 and £50,270³. At these salaries every extra pound of gross pay therefore loses 28p, so the net figures are:

Hours a week	Gross a year	Income tax	Employee NI (8%)	Take-home a year	Take-home a month
30	£19,827.60	£1,451.52	£580.61	£17,795.47	£1,482.96
35	£23,132.20	£2,112.44	£844.98	£20,174.78	£1,681.23
37.5	£24,784.50	£2,442.90	£977.16	£21,364.44	£1,780.37
40	£26,436.80	£2,773.36	£1,109.34	£22,554.10	£1,879.51

Income tax = (gross − £12,570) × 20%; employee NI = (gross − £12,570) × 8%. Excludes pension contributions, student loan repayments and Scottish income tax rates, which differ slightly at this level. Auto-enrolment (5% employee, on earnings above £6,240) would reduce the 37.5-hour take-home by roughly £58 a month, although 20% of that comes back as tax relief.

In other words a full-time worker on £12.71 an hour keeps about 86% of their gross pay — £21,364 of £24,784.50 — because the personal allowance shelters half the salary from tax and NI.

What £12.71 an hour costs an employer

If you are the one paying £12.71 an hour, the salary is only the start. For an employee aged 21 or over, employer National Insurance is charged at 15% on pay above £5,000 a year⁴, and auto-enrolment requires a minimum 3% employer pension contribution on earnings between £6,240 and £50,270 for staff aged 22 and over⁵. Those two statutory add-ons turn £12.71 an hour into a real hourly cost of about £14.52.

Hours a week	Gross salary	Employer NI (15% above £5,000)	Pension (3%)	Total employer cost	Cost per hour worked
30	£19,827.60	£2,224.14	£407.63	£22,459.37	£14.40
35	£23,132.20	£2,719.83	£506.77	£26,358.80	£14.48
37.5	£24,784.50	£2,967.68	£556.34	£28,308.52	£14.52
40	£26,436.80	£3,215.52	£605.90	£30,258.22	£14.55

37.5-hour row: NI = (£24,784.50 − £5,000) × 15% = £2,967.68; pension = (£24,784.50 − £6,240) × 3% = £556.34. Employers of under-21s pay 0% NI up to £50,270, and Employment Allowance can remove up to £10,500 of employer NI a year for eligible businesses. Excludes holiday cover, training, equipment and recruitment.

The cost per hour rises slightly with hours because the £5,000 and £6,240 thresholds are fixed annual amounts: the more hours someone works, the smaller the share of their pay that sits below them. Use the employer cost calculator to add Employment Allowance, a higher pension rate or overheads for your own numbers.

£12.71 versus £12.21: what the April 2026 rise means

The National Living Wage rose 50p from £12.21 to £12.71 on 1 April 2026, a 4.1% increase¹. For a 37.5-hour worker that is £975 more a year in gross pay (£23,809.50 became £24,784.50) and, after 28% tax and NI, about £702 more in take-home — roughly £58.50 a month. On 40 hours the gross rise is £1,040 a year.

For employers the same rise costs about £1,150 per full-time employee once the 15% employer NI and 3% pension on the extra pay are included. The 18 to 20 rate rose faster, from £10.00 to £10.85, and the under-18 and apprentice rates from £7.55 to £8.00. Rates are reviewed every April, so a salary set to exactly £24,784.50 will need increasing again on 1 April 2027.

Common mistakes when converting £12.71 an hour

The conversion is simple arithmetic, but these errors come up constantly in job adverts, contracts and budget spreadsheets:

• Using 40 hours when the contract says 37.5: the difference is £1,652.30 a year.
• Multiplying by 48 working weeks and forgetting that paid holiday is part of the salary — annual pay uses all 52 weeks.
• Dividing the annual figure by 4 to get a 'monthly' number (£1,906) instead of by 12 (£2,065.38). A month is about 4.33 weeks.
• Quoting £24,784.50 as take-home. Net pay at 37.5 hours is about £21,364 after tax and NI.
• Budgeting the salary alone when hiring. Employer NI and pension take a full-time NLW hire to about £28,309⁴.
• Assuming £12.71 applies to everyone: workers under 21 have lower statutory minimums (£10.85 at 18–20; £8.00 under 18 and for apprentices)¹, although employers may pay them the full rate.