Yeah, could totally be a regional difference.

I had the same thing when negotiating for salaries too, so it wasn't just when talking to people, but it was in a more official way as well, and I even got it in my contract like that.

When I was working as a tutor, my contract listed my pay in hourly pay, because I worked varying hours and I was paid by the hour. On my entry-level job my contract was in monthly before-tax pay, but negotiations were with monthly after-tax pay. And my later jobs were all in yearly before-tax pay, which might also have been relevant that way because in some of these jobs I had yearly bonuses and/or part of the payment in stock I got once a year. So with these yearly figures in there, probably it just made sense make everything yearly.