What FTE actually is
FTE — Full-Time Equivalent — is the unit employers use to count work rather than people. One full-time job is 1.0 FTE, however many hours that job happens to be. Two staff each working half the full-time week add up to 1.0 FTE between them, which is why a school or an NHS trust can report employing “42.6 FTE” nurses while having far more individual people on the payroll.
For an individual worker, the FTE is simply the pro rata fraction written as a decimal. It decides your salary, your holiday entitlement, and usually your pension contributions and any bonus. Once you know your FTE, every other part-time calculation is “full-time figure × your FTE” — the same formula the salary calculator uses.
One warning that catches people out in job adverts: an FTE only means something against a stated full-time week. A 0.8 FTE post is 30 hours where full time is 37.5, but 32 hours where full time is 40. If an advert quotes an FTE and a salary, do the conversion before comparing it with another job. The second calculator above works in that direction.
Frequently asked questions
FTE stands for Full-Time Equivalent. It expresses a working pattern as a decimal share of one full-time job. Working half the full-time hours is 0.5 FTE; working 24 of 40 hours is 0.6 FTE. Employers use it to count staffing and to pro rata pay, holiday and pensions consistently.
Divide your contracted hours by the full-time hours for the same job. If full time is 37.5 hours and you work 30, your FTE is 30 ÷ 37.5 = 0.8. The full-time week matters: the same 30 hours is 0.8 FTE in one workplace and 0.75 FTE in another where full time is 40 hours.
Multiply the FTE by the full-time hours. A 0.5 FTE post where full time is 40 hours is 0.5 × 40 = 20 hours a week. Job adverts that quote only an FTE use exactly this sum, so it is worth doing before you apply.
Yes. Salary follows the FTE exactly: 0.6 FTE on a £40,000 full-time post pays £24,000 a year. The same fraction normally applies to holiday entitlement, pension contributions and bonuses.