The formula: from monthly salary to hourly wage

If you take only one thing from this article, take these two formulas:

With 13th-month salary:

Hourly wage = (monthly salary × 13) ÷ (weekly hours × 52)

Without 13th-month salary:

Hourly wage = (monthly salary × 12) ÷ (weekly hours × 52)

This is the clean approach, the same one SECO uses in its payroll calculation templates. The 52 is simply the number of weeks in a year.

Quick example: CHF 6,000 monthly salary

Let's take Anna, a fictional marketing manager based in Bern. She earns CHF 6,000 gross per month, gets a 13th-month salary, and works 42 hours a week. Anna wants to know what she's actually making per hour.

(6,000 × 13) ÷ (42 × 52) = 78,000 ÷ 2,184 = CHF 35.71 gross/hour

If her contract didn't include a 13th (say, because it's already split into the monthly figure as 1/12), Anna would calculate with × 12 instead:

(6,000 × 12) ÷ (42 × 52) = 72,000 ÷ 2,184 = CHF 32.97 gross/hour

The CHF 2.74-per-hour difference is exactly your 13th salary, expressed as an hourly top-up.

Swiss weekly working hours: 40, 41, 42 or 42.5?

When converting monthly salary to hourly wage, weekly hours are the second big lever. Three more or three fewer hours a week change the result noticeably.

Weekly hours aren't standard everywhere. They depend on industry, role and employer:

• 40 hours: often public administration, some tech firms, sectors with collective labour agreements (CLA)
• 41 hours: common in banking and insurance
• 42 hours: widespread in SMEs, industry and services
• 42.5 hours: retail, some IT companies
• 45 hours: the legal maximum for most industries (Labour Act art. 9)

The takeaway: someone doing the same role at 40 instead of 42 hours earns roughly CHF 1.80 more per hour, even when the gross monthly looks identical. When comparing two job offers, the hourly wage is often the more honest yardstick than the monthly headline.

Vacation and public holiday pay on hourly wages

When you're paid by the hour, vacation and public holidays aren't paid time off — they're paid as a percentage top-up on each hourly wage. That's set in the Code of Obligations art. 329a (vacation entitlement) and art. 329d (vacation pay).

Vacation supplement: 8.33 % or 10.64 %

The math is simple: 4 weeks of vacation equals 4 out of 48 working weeks, so 8.33 %. 5 weeks equals 5 out of 47 weeks, so 10.64 %.

So on her CHF 35.71 gross per hour, Anna would get an extra 8.33 % if she were paid hourly instead of monthly: CHF 38.69 including vacation pay.

Public holiday pay: around 3 %

With 8 to 10 paid public holidays a year, you add another 3.0 to 3.5 %. The exact figure depends on the canton — only 1 August is a federal holiday, everything else is set at the cantonal level.

13th salary as a supplement: + 8.33 %

If the 13th is paid as a separate hourly top-up, it's 1/12 = 8.33 %. If you see an 8.33 % supplement labelled "13th" in your hourly contract, now you know what it means.

From gross to net: the social security deductions

Gross hourly wage isn't what lands in your bank account. In Switzerland, the employer deducts the following from each employee's gross pay (2026, employee share):

In a typical setup, roughly 15 to 18 % of gross is gone before the money hits your account. Anna's CHF 35.71 gross is therefore about CHF 29 to 30 net per hour. The employer adds another 15 % or so on top, so the "true" hourly cost of your job is around CHF 41. For the precise net figure based on your situation (canton, religion, children), use a Swiss gross-to-net calculator with cantonal tax rates.

That number matters if you're considering freelancing. It — not the gross hourly on your payslip — is the benchmark your freelance rate should beat.

If you're seriously planning the move, start with a simple invoicing tool for freelancers and issue a few test invoices. You'll quickly see whether your rate flies in the market.

From employee salary to freelance hourly rate

This is the section almost no one calculates honestly online. If you earn CHF 6,000 a month as an employee, you don't need CHF 35.71/hour as a freelancer to match it. You need a lot more — the five cost lines that change the math are right below.

A concrete example

Take Marc, a fictional IT consultant based in Lausanne. As an employee he earns CHF 8,500/month on a 42-hour week with a 13th salary. His employee hourly is CHF 50.60 gross. Marc is considering going freelance.

His accountant walks him through the numbers: at around CHF 120/hour with a realistic 60 % billable rate (so 24 billable hours a week instead of 42), he'd hit annual revenue of about CHF 144,000. After AHV (10 %), BVG (10 %), sickness insurance (1.5 %), tools, office and taxes, he'd net roughly the same as he does as an employee. More freedom, more risk, same standard of living.

That's the honest calculation. Every freelancer should know it before signing the first contract. If you're seriously planning the move, our guide to setting up a Swiss sole proprietorship is the logical next stop.

Excel template or online calculator: what's worth it?

There are plenty of Excel templates for this conversion, from SECO's to various private providers. For a one-off calculation, an Excel template is absolutely fine.

If you're calculating hourly pay regularly (because you have hourly employees or because you bill by the hour yourself), software is a much better fit. Accounting software for self-employed Swiss workers handles gross-to-net, vacation and holiday supplements automatically, and keeps payroll records compliant.

Magic Heidi wasn't built as payroll software — that's not our goal. But for invoicing at an hourly rate, tracking the hours worked, and billing the client cleanly, it earns its keep every day. The 13th salary, the freelancer ends up paying themselves — by leaving more on the business account than they need each month.