$12 an Hour Is How Much a Year?

The $$24,960 figure assumes 2,080 paid hours — 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, the convention payroll systems and the Bureau of Labor Statistics use. Unpaid time off reduces it; paid holidays and vacation do not. Part-time schedules scale in a straight line:

For 2026 the standard deduction is $16,100 for a single filer, so $24,960 of wages becomes $8,860 of taxable income, which reaches the 10% federal bracket. Federal income tax comes to $886. Social Security takes 6.2% ($1,548) and Medicare 1.45% ($362). Total federal withholding: $2,795, leaving $22,165 — or $1,847 a month — before any state tax.

A married couple filing jointly on the same $24,960 keeps $23,051, $886 more, because the joint standard deduction is $32,200 and the brackets are twice as wide.

State income tax is where $24,960 starts to diverge. Nine states take nothing; Oregon takes the most at this income. Every row applies that state's real 2026 brackets and standard deduction for a single filer.

The gap between Alaska ($22,165) and Oregon ($20,538) is $1,627 a year at $12 an hour — $136 a month. Use the state comparison tool to put two specific states side by side.

Time-and-a-half on $12 is $18.00 an hour. Overtime is taxed as ordinary income — the 22% figure people quote is a withholding rate on supplemental pay, not a separate tax — so what you keep depends on your bracket. For tax years 2025 through 2028 the One Big Beautiful Bill Act also allows a federal deduction for the premium portion of qualified overtime pay (up to $12,500 for a single filer), which this table does not include; see the overtime tax calculator for the deduction-aware figure.

$12 an hour sits below the minimum wage in a growing list of states — California ($16.50), Washington ($16.66), New York City and Long Island ($16.50), Connecticut ($16.35) — and about 1.7× the federal floor of $7.25 that still applies in roughly 20 states. The $24,960 annual figure is 1.6× the 2025 federal poverty guideline for a single adult ($15,650) but well under the roughly $62,000 a median full-time worker earns. Using the 30%-of-gross rule, rent should stay under about $624 a month, which rules out most one-bedroom apartments in major metros. Tax-wise, almost all of this income is taxed at the 10% and 12% federal brackets, and the Earned Income Tax Credit may apply for workers with children.

Every $1-an-hour raise adds $2,080 a year before tax — about $1,713 after federal tax and FICA at this income. Negotiating from $12 to $14 is therefore worth roughly $3,413 a year in your pocket, before state tax.