Remote work changes the denominator, and Everhour turns approved billable time into clean billing records.
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Remote work is a location arrangement, not a separate occupation. A remote designer, analyst, developer, bookkeeper, or consultant should start from the worker's actual role, then price the remote arrangement around utilization, expenses, benefits, and taxes. BLS reported that 33% of employed people spent some time working at home on days worked in 2024, but that statistic does not create a single "remote worker" wage.
The calculation answers one practical question: what hourly client rate covers your target income, business overhead, replacement benefits, and tax reserve after non-client work reduces your billable hours. BLS OEWS annualizes hourly wages using 2,080 hours per year, but that is a paid-hours baseline for wage-and-salary workers. A solo remote contractor needs a billable-hours denominator, because proposals, admin, accounting, promotion, and client calls without chargeable scope still consume working time.
BLS OEWS reported a May 2025 median hourly wage of $24.51 across all U.S. occupations. That figure works only as a broad fallback when the actual remote occupation is unknown. For tech-heavy remote work, BLS reported a May 2025 median hourly wage of $52.54 for Computer and Mathematical Occupations, SOC major group 15-0000. Both figures cover wage-and-salary workers, not self-employed contractors.
A remote contractor should avoid copying an employee wage into a client rate. OEWS excludes the self-employed, owners and partners in unincorporated firms, household workers, and unpaid family workers. Freelance remote pricing has to add business expenses, unpaid time, self-funded benefits, and tax reserves. Upwork's 2026 public profile-rate bands, from $10-$25 for entry/admin work to $75-$150+ for specialized work, are market signals, not payroll-derived wage medians.
Use this formula: (target income + overhead + benefits substitute + tax gross-up) ÷ billable hours. The numerator includes the money the business must collect before client work produces the income you want. The denominator includes client-project time only. For U.S. self-employed pricing, the tax reserve should account for income tax plus self-employment tax, reported through Schedule C and Schedule SE for many sole proprietors and independent contractors.
For example, a remote consultant wants $82,000 in income, expects $8,700 in software, internet, equipment, and accounting overhead, budgets $12,900 for health coverage and other benefits substitute, and sets aside $18,500 for taxes. If 1,480 hours are realistically billable, the required hourly rate is $82.50: $122,100 ÷ 1,480. Raising the denominator to 2,080 paid hours would underprice the work by ignoring 600 hours of non-billable business time.
A one-off calculation is enough when you need a floor rate for a proposal, a quick check on a fixed-fee project, or a sanity check against an occupational benchmark. It also works when your remote work has simple costs and you review the rate only a few times per year. The calculator gives the rate, but it does not prove which hours were billable or keep invoiced work from being billed twice.
A managed workflow matters once remote work spans multiple clients, retainers, mixed billable and non-billable tasks, or changing rates. Everhour Billing & Invoicing converts tracked billable time and expenses into invoices, excludes non-billable tasks, and exports invoices to QuickBooks Online, Xero, or FreshBooks. That workflow gives the rate calculation a billing handoff instead of leaving approved hours in spreadsheets.
This content is for general information only, may not be fully up to date, and is provided without any warranty or liability.
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Use the actual occupation first. Remote work describes where the work happens, not the job being priced. A remote software developer, bookkeeper, and virtual assistant have different labor markets, cost structures, and client expectations. BLS all-occupation wages are fallback context only, while role-specific wage data and market pricing give a better starting point.
Count client-project time only. Administration, accounting, promotion, advertising, proposal writing, unpaid discovery calls, and internal planning reduce the denominator because they take time without directly producing billable revenue. A remote worker who works 2,080 total hours in a year can still have 1,400 to 1,600 billable hours after non-client work.
Qualified self-employed remote workers can include ordinary and necessary business costs in overhead, including eligible home-office costs. The IRS simplified home-office method uses $5 per square foot, capped at 300 square feet, for taxpayers who qualify for business use of the home. Employees cannot claim the employee home-office deduction after 2017.
2,080 hours is a paid full-time baseline used by BLS OEWS to annualize hourly wages. It does not represent a solo freelancer's billable time. A remote contractor also spends time on client acquisition, invoicing, bookkeeping, tool maintenance, training, and unpaid communication. Using 2,080 as the denominator spreads costs across hours that never become invoiceable.
A U.S. remote contractor generally needs a reserve for federal income tax and self-employment tax. For 2026, self-employment tax is 15.3% on 92.35% of net self-employment earnings, with the 12.4% Social Security portion capped at the $184,500 wage base and Medicare uncapped before any Additional Medicare Tax threshold applies.
Everhour Billing & Invoicing converts tracked billable time and expenses into client invoices, calculates invoice amounts from rates, and excludes non-billable tasks. Invoices can be exported to QuickBooks Online, Xero, or FreshBooks, with invoice status, number, issue date, and amount synced back to Everhour.
Set the rate once, then keep client work invoice-ready. Everhour connects billable time, expenses, invoice generation, and accounting exports for cleaner remote-work billing.
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