How hourly pay is worked out from a monthly salary in Greece

The formula has three steps, and a phone does them in a minute1:

1. Divide your gross monthly salary by 25. That is your daily pay, the ημερομίσθιο.
2. Multiply the daily pay by 6. That gives you the value of one week, the way the formula counts it.
3. Divide by 40, the hours of a full-time week. That is your hourly pay, the ωρομίσθιο.

Take a salary of €1,250 gross. The daily pay is €50.00. Times 6 makes €300, and divided by 40 it gives €7.50 an hour.

There is a shorter road as well. The three steps together do the same as one: multiply the salary by 6 and divide by 1,000. With €1,250 you get 7,500, and divided by 1,000 you arrive again at €7.50. Keep it in your head and use it in any conversation about pay.

The formula works with gross pay. The hourly pay you get is gross too, and contributions and tax come out of it, as they do from your salary. Further down you will see how much of it is left as net pay.

This is the most common question, and a fair one. October 2026 has 22 days from Monday to Friday, and one of them, Wednesday 28 October, is a public holiday. So why divide by 25?

Because an employee’s month always counts 25 working days, as if they worked 6 days a week. The rule holds when your week has 5 days as well. Your salary does not change from month to month with the working days, so your daily pay does not change either. If you divided by the working days of each month, February would give you a higher daily pay than October for exactly the same work.

The daily pay you get this way is more than a step towards the hour. It is the base for public holidays, the sixth day, annual leave and the bonuses. You meet the same 25 in your insurance record too: an employee on a monthly salary is credited with 25 insurance days a month, while a manual worker on a daily wage is credited with the days actually worked.

An example shows how easily the sum goes astray. On €920 gross, the right daily pay is €36.80. If you divide by the 22 weekdays of October, you get €41.82, a daily pay that exists nowhere. And if your employer docks a day of absence, they will not dock it at that figure.

The second part of the formula looks stranger, but it says something simple. The formula sees the week as 6 days, and full-time work is 40 hours. So one day of the formula lasts 40 divided by 6, which is 6 hours and 40 minutes. The daily pay times 6 gives the pay of the week, and that divided by 40 gives the pay of one hour.

Here is a puzzle for anyone who works a 5-day week. Your own day has 8 hours, and 8 hours on the minimum wage come to €44.16, more than the daily pay of €36.80. The sum has no mistake. A 5-day week spreads the same 40 hours over 5 days instead of 6, so your day lasts longer than the day of the formula. The week and the month stay the same, and that is what your salary pays.

Seen across the whole month, the formula assumes about 166.67 hours of work: 25 days of 6 hours and 40 minutes. Some people divide the salary by 173 hours, to count 4.33 weeks of 40 hours. Others divide by 160, which is exactly four weeks. Neither of these is the way the Labour Inspectorate counts.

On €1,250 gross, the right formula gives €7.50. Dividing by 173 would give €7.23, and dividing by 160 would give €7.81. For one hour the gap is a few cents. Over a year of regular overtime it adds up to real money, and when someone disputes your hours, you want to argue with the figure an inspector would accept.

From 1 April 2026 the minimum wage is €920 gross a month for full-time work2. With the formula, the daily pay is €36.80 and the hourly pay €5.52. No act states this hourly figure. It comes from the formula, just as yours does.

The same decision also sets a minimum daily wage, €41.09, for people paid by the day2. Many people get confused here, because the two figures do not agree: €920 divided by 25 makes €36.80, while the minimum daily wage is higher. They are two separate minimums, one for a salaried employee and one for a manual worker on a daily wage, and one does not come from the other. Both apply to full-time work and to an employee with no previous service. If your sector agreement or your years of service give you more, that amount is your base, and the formula works with it.

If you are paid by the day, your hourly pay comes quicker. The first step, dividing by 25, is not needed, because you already have the pay of a day. You do only the other two: times 6, divided by 40. On the minimum daily wage, an hour is worth €6.16 gross.

If the hourly pay you work out is below these figures, something is wrong. Either your contract shows fewer hours than you work, or your salary is below the minimum. In both cases it is worth a word with the payroll office, and if that leads nowhere, with the Labour Inspectorate.

In part-time work the formula keeps the first two steps and changes the third. You divide by the weekly hours your contract shows. That way half a salary for half the hours gives the same hour as the full salary, which is only fair.

Take the minimum wage on four hours a day, five days a week: 20 hours. The salary is €920 times 20 divided by 40, so €460 gross. The hourly pay is €460 divided by 25, times 6, divided by 20: €5.52, exactly the same as on a full day. If you divided by 40 by mistake, you would get €2.76, half the hour. And every extra hour you were asked to work would be paid at half its value.

The same logic holds for any contract with other hours. On €825 for 30 hours a week, the hourly pay is €6.60. On €1,100 for 30 hours it is €8.80. That is a much better hour than the same €1,100 for 40 hours, which gives €6.60.

The comparison matters when you choose between two jobs. A smaller salary for fewer hours can pay your time better, and leave you room for something else. Hours above the contract in part-time work carry a premium of their own, which you will find in the article on part-time work, four hours a day.

This is where knowing your hourly pay pays off. Every premium for hours is counted on it, and each kind of hour has a premium of its own3,4:

• Extra hours, the υπερεργασία, from the 41st to the 45th hour of a 5-day week, are paid at the hourly pay plus 20%.
• Legal overtime, above 45 hours, is paid at the hourly pay plus 40%.
• Overtime without approval is paid at the hourly pay plus 120%.
• A night hour, from 22:00 to 06:00, adds 25% on top of the hourly pay.

On a salary of €1,100 gross, the hourly pay is €6.60, and each kind of hour is paid like this:

The night row shows only the premium. A night hour is usually inside your normal hours, so your salary already pays for it, and the premium comes on top. Night work has its own article, written for the change of the clocks. For the difference between extra hours and overtime, see Extra hours and overtime.

Sundays, public holidays and the sixth day do not count by the hour. They count for the whole day, so on the daily pay. On the same €1,100, the 75% premium for one Sunday is €33.004. The law counts this premium on the legal daily wage, so if your salary is above the minimum or above your sector agreement, check what your own contract says.

The hourly pay of the formula is gross. The same deductions come out of it as out of your salary: your contributions to e-EFKA, 13.37%, and income tax5. The simple way to find your net hourly pay is to take the share of your salary that you keep, and apply it to the hour.

On €1,100 gross, with no children and over 30, you keep €894.50 net a month. So you keep about four euros of every five. You keep the same share of every hour at €6.60. If you have children or are under 30, the share is larger, because your tax is lower.

Overtime leaves a little more. Since 2025, the premium carries no contributions for people who work full time. Only the plain hourly pay carries contributions, while the tax counts on the whole amount. So you keep a slightly larger part of an overtime hour than of an ordinary one.

One thing does not change: the hour you know is the gross hour. In every talk with your employer, and in every check of your payslip, start from gross pay. Look at the net at the end, to know what will reach your account.

On a Greek payslip, overtime and public holidays appear among the earnings, below the basic salary. Each kind usually has its own line, with the hours or days and the amount. If you know your hourly pay, the check takes two minutes.

Divide the amount of the line by its hours, and you find what one hour was paid. Then divide that by your hourly pay. If you get 1.20, the line carries the premium for extra hours. If you get 1.40, it carries the premium for legal overtime. If you get 1, the premium is missing, and it is worth asking why.

Night work and Sundays are often shown with the premium alone, because the hour or the day is already inside your salary. For night work, the ratio of the hour to your hourly pay should come to 0.25. For a Sunday, divide by your daily pay, and each Sunday should give 0.75.

For the check to mean anything, you also need your own record of hours. Keep a simple note on your phone, day by day: when you started, when you left, whether you worked at night or on a Sunday. When the payslip arrives you have something to compare, and a talk with the payroll office rests on facts.

Your hourly pay follows your salary. When you get a raise, your hourly pay changes from the same month, and with it every overtime hour, every night and every Sunday. The short road shows it at once: a raise of €50 gross lifts the hour by €50 times 6 divided by 1,000, which is €0.30.

The same holds when the minimum wage rises and your salary is the minimum. On the €920 of 2026, the hour is €5.52. If you work overtime often, check the first payslip after every change of salary. That is where mistakes usually happen, when the new salary goes into the line of the basic pay but the hours are still counted at the old hourly rate.