How Many Hours Can a Freelancer Bill? What the Hours Data Shows

By Reese Calloway · Updated 2026-10-04

How we research, cite and correct our guides

No government survey counts billable hours, so any single “typical” figure is someone’s estimate. Two things are measured, though: how long self-employed people work, and how much paid time off employees get. In 2025, self-employed people who usually work full time were at work an average of 42.3 hours a week, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Current Population Survey. A private-industry employee with one year of service gets an average of 26 paid days off a year: 11 vacation days, 8 holidays and 7 sick days (BLS National Compensation Survey, March 2026). Take the same time off and a 52-week year leaves 46.8 working weeks.

The share of those hours you can bill has to come from your own time records. This page sets out the measured parts and shows how much the result moves with the part you supply.

How long self-employed people actually work

People at work in nonagricultural industries, 2025 annual averages:

Source: BLS Current Population Survey, annual average Table 21. Percentages are calculated from the table’s counts of people at work: 8.6 million self-employed and 147.0 million wage and salary workers.

• A full-time freelance week is not shorter. Full-time self-employed people worked slightly longer than full-time employees, 42.3 hours against 41.8. Those hours also have to cover the sales, quotes, invoicing and bookkeeping that an employer spreads across other staff, so not all of them can be billed.
• Slow weeks are more common. “Economic reasons” means slack work, business conditions or finding only part-time work. In an average 2025 week, 6.6 percent of the self-employed worked short hours for those reasons, more than twice the 2.9 percent of employees. A plan that assumes every week is full has no room for that.
• Many work part time. 26.7 percent usually work under 35 hours for reasons other than a shortage of work, which is why the average across everyone (34.7 hours) sits well below a full-time week.

The American Time Use Survey adds a daily view. On an average day in 2025, weekends and holidays included, 60.8 percent of self-employed people worked at their main job, for an average of 6.14 hours on the days they worked. For wage and salary workers the figures were 64.7 percent and 7.67 hours.

Two notes on definitions. Both surveys count people whose businesses are incorporated as wage and salary workers, so the self-employed rows cover sole proprietors and other unincorporated businesses. The 2025 Current Population Survey averages cover 11 months, because no data were collected in October 2025 during the federal government shutdown.

The time off an employee gets

Average paid days off for private-industry workers who receive each benefit, March 2026:

Source: BLS National Compensation Survey. Working weeks left = 52 − total paid days off ÷ 5.

Eighty percent of private-industry workers had paid vacation, 81 percent paid holidays and 81 percent paid sick leave. The survey excludes the self-employed, so it describes what an employer pays for, not what freelancers take. It is still the right yardstick when you compare a rate with a job: an employee paid for 2,080 hours a year works about 1,870 of them once the first-year time off above is taken (26 days × 8 hours = 208 hours).

For a freelancer, every one of those days is unpaid unless the rate covers it. Planning on 50 working weeks means taking less time off than an average first-year employee. Forty-six or 47 weeks matches the employee average and still leaves nothing for slow weeks or a gap between contracts.

The billable share comes from your own records

No federal survey asks self-employed people what share of their hours they bill. Measure it. Record the date, task, client or internal project, duration, and whether the agreement lets you charge for it, using categories that do not overlap:

These are invented inputs, not survey results. Meetings, discovery and revisions can be billable under some agreements; classify them from your actual terms. Collect records across busy, quiet and admin-heavy weeks, because one good week overstates what a year holds.

The record gives you three numbers, each with a different denominator. At $50 per billable hour:

• Utilization = billable hours ÷ total working hours = 25 ÷ 40 = 62.5%.
• Gross revenue per working hour = billed rate × utilization = $50 × 0.625 = $31.25.
• Rate needed for a target: working back divides instead. To bring in $50 per working hour at 62.5% utilization, charge $50 ÷ 0.625 = $80 per billable hour.

None of these is take-home pay; business expenses and tax still come out.

From the working week to a year of billable hours

Applying three billable shares to the measured full-time week (42.3 hours) and the employee-equivalent year (46.8 weeks):

Billable hours a year = 42.3 × share × 46.8, rounded to the nearest hour. The rate is $96,000 ÷ those hours. The $96,000 is an example billing target, not a benchmark, and the shares are assumptions to test, not survey results.

Dividing the same $96,000 by the 2,080-hour employee year would suggest $46.15 an hour, less than half the rate needed at a 50 percent billable share. That gap is why a rate copied from a salary’s hourly equivalent falls short.

Two inputs move the result most:

• Weeks worked. At 25.4 billable hours a week, each extra week off removes 25.4 billable hours, about 2 percent of the 1,188-hour year.
• Billable share. Moving from 50 to 60 percent adds 198 billable hours a year without a longer week, provided the work is there to sell.

Run your own weeks, hours and costs through the hourly rate calculator, which also shows what you earn per hour worked. The occupation rate table on this site assumes 1,200 billable hours (48 weeks × 25 hours), close to the 60 percent row above.

Check the plan against what actually happened

At each review, compare estimated and actual project hours, unbilled business time, invoices issued and money received. A completed billable hour, an issued invoice and cash collected are separate events. If billable hours keep falling below plan, update the annual figure and look at demand or scheduling before relying on a price increase alone.

Track hours on fixed-fee work too, even though they never appear on the invoice. A $360 fee over three hours works out to $120 an hour; over six hours it is $60. The hourly-versus-project guide covers the different risks of each way of charging.

This is a capacity and revenue model built on published averages and illustrative inputs, not individualized financial advice.

Sources

Accessed October 4, 2026.

• BLS, Current Population Survey: People at work in nonagricultural industries by class of worker and usual full- or part-time status, 2025 annual averages (Table 21)
• BLS, American Time Use Survey 2025: Employed people working on main job by class of worker, occupation and earnings (Table 7)
• BLS, National Compensation Survey: Average sick and vacation days by length of service, March 2026
• BLS, Who receives paid vacations? (March 2026); average paid holidays and access rates from the BLS Employee Benefits database, series NBU20600000000000030074, NBU20500000000000033030, NBU20600000000000033073 and NBU20700000000000033087