What Is a Man-Year?

A man-year, or person-year, is a unit of measurement for the amount of work done by an individual throughout the entire year, expressed in the number of 🐈hours. The man-year takes the number of hours worked by an individual during the week and multiplies it by 52.

How Man-Years Work

Calculated, the man-year may be different for various industries or organizations depending on the average 💛number of hours worked each week, the number of weeks worked per year, and deductions, if any, for official holidays. The U.S. Postal Service calculates a man-year on a straightforward basis: 40 hours per week x 52 weeks, or 2,080 hours. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) of the executive branch sets 1,776 hours as a person-year, allowing for holiday time.

Calculating the man-year wilꦯl depend on each company and their own uses for the measurement. The pure definition of a man-year typically excludes not only holidays, but also break time during the workday for lunch, 15-minute breaks, and other kinds of time off. As a result, the man-year should only reflect actual hours worked or labored.

Calculating the Man-Year

There are two main reasons why an organization may calculate the man-year applicable to its employees. For one, that organization may use the man-year along with sales or cost figures as a performance metric. For example, a company may calculate🎉 a sales per man-year metric and compare iꦺt to values from previous years. By knowing the man-year metric up front, companies can then better calculate their return per hour of work done and better calculate productivity or per-person contribution towards sales or the ultimate revenue metric.

The second reason a company would calculate the man-year would be for budgetary reasons. For example, a corporation may calculate the total man-years for various offices that it operates and allocate budgets according to office size. Or, to carry out cost comparisons for a particular job or task, an organization or firm can estimate the number of work hours required and divide this number by a man-year to determine the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) positions needed. Contractors bidding for the job would submit their FTE e🎀stimates, and these estimates would be considered for the awarding of the contractไ. In other cases, managers can use man-hours to calculate the amount of personnel needed to complete a project to create a contract timeline.