# FTE Calculator Last updated October 15, 2026FreeNo signupFormula shown Enter your full-time staff, the hours of a full-time week and your part-time groups, and this FTE calculator turns the hours into full-time equivalents, with a second count for the Affordable Care Act's 50-employee line. Number of full-time employees Full-time hours per week The schedule that counts as one FTE at your company. Every full-time employee counts as 1. Part-time staff Group 1 Remove People in group 1 Hours a week each, group 1 Group 2 Remove People in group 2 Hours a week each, group 2 Add a group Full-time equivalents 25.5FTE From a headcount of 30 people teampredict.ai/tools/fte-calculator How the FTE adds up Full-time employees (20 × 1) 20 Group 1: 6 × 20 h = 120 h a week 3 Group 2: 4 × 25 h = 100 h a week 2.5 Total FTE25.5 Part-time hours: 220 a week, or 5.5 FTE. FTE is 85% of headcount. Affordable Care Act count Below the 50 line 27 Full-time employees plus full-time equivalent employees, if every month of the year looked like this one, rounded down. Full-time (30+ hours a week) 20 Equivalents (953.3 h a month ÷ 120) 7.94 Total for the month 27.94 Weekly hours × 52 ÷ 12 = monthly hours. Each person under 30 hours a week counts up to 120 hours a month. Copy resultsCopy link ## FTE is total hours worked divided by the hours of one full-time week. FTE = full-time employees + (part-time hours per week ÷ full-time hours per week) Each full-time employee counts as 1. A part-timer counts as their share of a full-time week, so someone on 20 hours against a 40-hour standard is 0.5 FTE. The standard is yours to set. The calculator starts at 40 because federal [overtime pay](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/overtime) starts after 40 hours in a workweek; a company that runs 37.5-hour weeks should enter 37.5, or every part-timer will come out slightly small. Over a year, one FTE at 40 hours a week for 52 weeks is 2,080 hours. ## Twenty full-timers and ten part-timers come to 25.5 FTE. Those are the numbers the calculator opens with. An invented clinic employs 20 people at 40 hours a week, 6 receptionists at 20 hours each and 4 assistants at 25 hours each. - Full-time: 20 × 1 = 20 FTE - Receptionists: 6 × 20 = 120 hours a week, and 120 ÷ 40 = 3 FTE - Assistants: 4 × 25 = 100 hours a week, and 100 ÷ 40 = 2.5 FTE - Total: 20 + 3 + 2.5 = 25.5 FTE, from a headcount of 30 The clinic has 30 people covering 25.5 people's worth of scheduled hours, which is 85% of its headcount. At 2,080 hours per FTE that is 25.5 × 2,080 = 53,040 scheduled hours a year, the figure a budget or a staffing plan actually needs. _Figure: A bar chart of the page's invented team of 20 full-time employees, 6 people at 20 hours a week and 4 at 25 hours, counted three ways. Headcount is 30. FTE at a 40-hour week is 25.5. The Affordable Care Act count is 27: 20 full-time employees plus 953.3 monthly hours divided by 120, which is 27.94, rounded down._ The calculator's default team. Same 30 people, three different numbers. ## The Affordable Care Act counts full-time equivalent employees with its own rules. The IRS uses full-time equivalent employees for one job: deciding whether an employer is an applicable large employer, which brings the employer shared responsibility and information reporting provisions. The rules come from two IRS pages, [identifying full-time employees](https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/employers/identifying-full-time-employees) and [determining if an employer is an applicable large employer](https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/employers/determining-if-an-employer-is-an-applicable-large-employer). - A full-time employee, for a calendar month, averages at least 30 hours of service a week, or has at least 130 hours of service in the month. - For everyone else, add their hours of service for the month, counting no more than 120 per employee, and divide the total by 120. That is the month's number of full-time equivalent employees, fraction included. - Add the full-time and full-time equivalent employees for each month of the prior calendar year and divide by 12. In the IRS's own example, a result that is not a whole number is rounded down to the next lowest whole number. - At least 50 on average makes the employer an applicable large employer for the current year. Fewer than 50 does not. _Figure: Five steps from the IRS pages. One, find the full-time employees: an average of at least 30 hours of service a week, or 130 hours in the month. Two, add the hours of everyone else, counting no more than 120 hours a month per person. Three, divide that total by 120; the fraction stays in. Four, add the full-time employees, then average the 12 months of the prior year and round down to a whole number. Five, compare with 50: at least 50 makes an applicable large employer._ The calculator applies those rules to one month and assumes every month of the year looks the same, so the 12-month average equals that month. It turns weekly hours into monthly hours by multiplying by 52 and dividing by 12. That conversion is the calculator's own, not an IRS figure, and it lines up with the IRS's two definitions: 30 hours a week × 52 ÷ 12 is exactly 130 hours a month. For the clinic, the 20 full-timers are full-time employees. A 20-hour week is 86.7 hours a month and a 25-hour week is 108.3, so the part-timers add 6 × 86.7 + 4 × 108.3 = 953.3 hours. Divided by 120 that is 7.94 full-time equivalent employees, for a total of 27.94, rounded down to 27 and below the 50 line. The ACA count comes out higher than the 25.5 FTE because it divides part-time hours by 120 a month, about 27.7 hours a week, instead of by a 40-hour week. _Figure: A bar chart of the monthly hours one person adds to the ACA count, using weekly hours times 52 divided by 12. 10 hours a week is 43.3 hours a month, 20 is 86.7, 25 is 108.3. 28 hours a week is 121.3 hours a month, but only 120 count. 30 hours a week is 130 hours a month, which makes the person a full-time employee, counted as 1 rather than in the hours._ Weekly hours × 52 ÷ 12. The dark line is the IRS cap of 120 hours per person. The 120-hour cap matters most for schedules just under 30 hours. A 28-hour week works out to 121.3 hours a month, but only 120 count, so that person adds exactly one full-time equivalent. At 30 hours they stop adding hours altogether and count as a full-time employee. ## Full-time starts at 30, 35 or 40 hours depending on who is counting. Three lines for full-time work sit in three different places, and each one is right for its own purpose. - **30 hours:** the Affordable Care Act count above, an average of at least 30 hours of service a week. - **35 hours:** the [BLS household survey](https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm) says “Part-time workers are those who usually work fewer than 35 hours per week.” - **40 hours:** federal overtime pay starts after 40 hours in a workweek, and 40 is this calculator's default full-time standard for FTE. _Figure: Three places where full-time starts. The Affordable Care Act counts an employee as full-time at an average of at least 30 hours a week. The Bureau of Labor Statistics household survey counts people who usually work fewer than 35 hours a week as part-time. The calculator's FTE standard starts at 40 hours, because federal overtime pay starts after 40 hours in a workweek. A 32-hour week is full-time for the ACA, part-time in the BLS survey and 0.8 FTE at 40 hours._ A 32-hour, four-day schedule shows the difference. It is full-time for the ACA count, part-time in the BLS survey, and 0.8 FTE against a 40-hour standard. Enter those people as a part-time group at 32 hours and the calculator does both at once: 0.8 FTE each in the first card, and full-time employees in the ACA card. ## Use FTE for capacity and cost, and headcount for turnover. FTE answers how much work your schedule covers. Headcount answers how many people you employ. Turnover and retention rates divide by headcount, because people leave, not hours: when one of the clinic's 20-hour receptionists resigns, that is one whole leaver in the turnover rate and 0.5 FTE of lost capacity. The [headcount entry in the HR glossary](https://www.teampredict.ai/glossary/headcount) explains average headcount, and the [turnover rate calculator](https://www.teampredict.ai/tools/employee-turnover-rate-calculator) runs the formula with it. Mixing FTE into one side of that formula and headcount into the other quietly distorts the rate, as the [attrition rate guide](https://www.teampredict.ai/blog/attrition-rate) explains. When you price a departure, the [turnover cost calculator](https://www.teampredict.ai/tools/employee-turnover-cost-calculator) works from salary, so a part-time role goes in at its part-time pay. For a shift-based team, plan cover in FTE and report losses in people. ## Every FTE you lose starts as one person deciding to leave. An FTE count tells you how many hours the team covers today. It says nothing about who is likely to leave next month, and a half-time specialist who resigns leaves the same hole in the rota whether or not anyone saw it coming. TeamPredict works on that part, reading public LinkedIn signals to flag resignation risk early, so a gap in your FTE plan shows up as a warning while there is still time to talk, rather than as a notice period you have to staff around. ## Methodology & sources The formula this calculator uses is shown in full above, and every assumption is an input you control. There are no hidden industry presets. All math runs in your browser; nothing you enter is stored or sent to a server. For the reasoning behind the formula and its edge cases, see: - [IRS: Identifying full-time employees (30 hours a week or 130 a month)](https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/employers/identifying-full-time-employees) - [IRS: Determining if an employer is an applicable large employer (the 120-hour rule and the 50 line)](https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/employers/determining-if-an-employer-is-an-applicable-large-employer) - [BLS: Concepts and definitions of full-time and part-time workers](https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm) - [U.S. Department of Labor: Overtime pay](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/overtime) - [What is headcount? Headcount and FTE answer different questions](https://www.teampredict.ai/glossary/headcount) Embed this calculator Add the FTE Calculator to your own site, blog post, or internal wiki. It's free. Please paste this snippet where you want the calculator to appear: ```

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``` Copy embed codeFree to embed. Please keep the attribution link. ## Frequently asked questions How do you calculate FTE? Add the weekly hours of everyone in scope and divide by the hours of one full-time week. Put another way, each full-time employee counts as 1 and each part-timer counts as their hours divided by the full-time hours, so 20 hours against a 40-hour week is 0.5 FTE. A team of 20 full-timers, 6 people at 20 hours and 4 at 25 hours is 20 + 120 ÷ 40 + 100 ÷ 40 = 25.5 FTE. How many hours a year is one FTE? At 40 hours a week for 52 weeks it is 2,080 hours, and at 37.5 hours a week it is 1,950. For the Affordable Care Act count, the IRS includes paid hours with no work in hours of service, such as vacation, holidays and illness. Decide once whether paid leave sits inside your own FTE figure and keep it the same in every report. Is 32 hours a week full-time? It depends on who is counting. For the Affordable Care Act it is, because the IRS treats an average of at least 30 hours of service a week as full-time. The BLS household survey counts people who usually work fewer than 35 hours a week as part-time, and against a 40-hour standard a 32-hour week is 0.8 FTE. Does the ACA count round full-time equivalent employees? Not month by month. The IRS divides a month's non-full-time hours by 120 and keeps the fraction, which is why its own example shows 7.5 full-time equivalent employees for a month. The rounding comes at the end: when the 12-month average of full-time plus full-time equivalent employees is not a whole number, the IRS example rounds it down to the next lowest whole number, so 47.5 becomes 47. Can one person count as more than 1 FTE? In this calculator, yes. It divides hours by your full-time standard and does not cap anyone, so a group working 45 hours against a 40-hour week counts as 1.125 FTE each. If your budget counts every person as at most one FTE, enter those people as full-time employees instead. The ACA card has its own limit: anyone averaging 30 hours a week or more counts as exactly one full-time employee. ## Turnover is cheaper to prevent than to calculate. TeamPredict flags resignation risk early from public LinkedIn signals, giving you lead time to retain your best people before they hand in notice. [Start 30-Day Free Trial](https://app.teampredict.ai/signup) No charge today · Cancel anytime ## Keep reading [What Is Headcount? Average headcount, the two ways to calculate it, and why turnover divides by people rather than hours. Read more](https://www.teampredict.ai/glossary/headcount) [Employee Turnover Rate Calculator Separations divided by average headcount, for a month, a quarter or a year, with the annualized figure. Read more](https://www.teampredict.ai/tools/employee-turnover-rate-calculator) [Attrition Rate: Meaning and Formula When attrition and turnover differ, and why headcount and FTE should never share one formula. Read more](https://www.teampredict.ai/blog/attrition-rate)