For me, and I suspect this is pretty status quo in the US, the number that shows up in my checking account biweekly is my annual salary divided by 24, minus taxes and automatic deductions for mortgage, 401k, stock purchase, health plan, etc., with the occasional bonus thrown in to mix things up. It's a very arbitrary number and it would be impossible to back-calculate my overall compensation from it.

It shows up in your checking account semi-monthly ;)

It's a slight difference, where the end result is a difference of 2 paychecks per year (24 for semi-monthly vs 26 for bi-weekly)

> the number that shows up in my checking account biweekly is my annual salary divided by 24

Either you're paid twice a month rather than every other week, or the biweekly number is your annual salary divided by _26_, or, I guess, you're subject to a strict requirement to take two weeks of unpaid vacation every year.

Good point. In that case I really don't really even understand how my beer money relates back to my salary.

Um, wow.

That's really something you should know and understand because you want to make sure you are getting paid correctly and catch any payroll errors. They are not uncommon, I've caught a couple myself, including an $1,800 mistake.

If you're paid biweekly (say, every other Friday) you have 26 pay periods. If you are paid semi monthly (say the first and the fifteenth) then you'll have 24 pay periods.

A lot of jobs in the US pay biweekly, which comes out to a nice, round 2.166 paychecks per average calendar month. Paperwork here generally either asks for annual income or asks both paycheck and length of pay period.

So its possible to have to wait more than a month for your first paycheck? i.e. start on the 1st and they pay on the 1st weekday of a new month for the past month?

I'd hate to be loaning the company money that long every month.

In Western Europe there doesn't seem to be a clear 'standard' of when ppl get paid. I know several people who are paid on the 10th each month, for example. (I happen to know this because they negotioted their rent payments to be on the 11th for properties they rent from me). Others are around 22-24; I used to get paid 28-30 in various jobs. There is probably a reason for this clustering, or maybe my sample size is too small and there is no clustering.

How often you're paid depends, often it's twice per month, but the agreed amount in the agreement (and everywhere else where you'd discuss it) would be listed as x eur/month.

> So its possible to have to wait more than a month for your first paycheck?

Yes, it's pretty typical.

> I'd hate to be loaning the company money that long every month

That doesn't make any sense.

In sweden, salaries are traditionally paid the 25:th.

An if you get paid per hour, your payment is usually for the previous month, so 56 days late.

In the Netherlands also the 25th. However, if you get paid per hour, it may also be that you are paid weekly or biweekly, but indeed usually a cycle later.

Yes, unless you're self-employed and bill people, you pretty much always get paid monthly.