Virtual Assistant Recruiting Cost Benchmarks for 2026

The best virtual assistant recruiting cost benchmarks for 2026 start with a broad U.S. hiring baseline, then adjust for the role, employment model, and recruiting process. There is no federal dataset for the job title "virtual assistant." Employers use that title for work that can map to several occupations, including general administrative support, executive assistance, customer service, and bookkeeping. A single market average can hide more than it explains.

Current national data gives employers a useful starting point. SHRM reports an average nonexecutive cost per hire of $5,475 in its 2025 U.S. recruiting benchmark study. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a $48,310 median annual wage for secretaries and administrative assistants in May 2025. For executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants, the median was $76,590. These figures do not quote the price of an outsourced virtual assistant. They show what a U.S. employer may spend to recruit and compensate an employee doing comparable work.

This analysis explains how to use those benchmarks without mixing incompatible measures. Employers comparing models can also review the broader cost of hiring a virtual assistant and the available ways to hire a virtual assistant.

Virtual assistant recruiting cost benchmarks 2026 at a glance

SHRM surveyed 2,371 members from January 9 through March 3, 2025. Respondents represented different U.S. industries, sectors, and organization sizes. The results were not weighted, and the number of responses varied by metric. Those details matter: $5,475 is a cross-industry average, not a guaranteed quote for one virtual assistant hire.

The BLS wage figures cover employees in U.S. occupations. They do not cover independent contractors hired abroad or a managed virtual assistant service. Use them for an employee comparison, not as a worldwide pay table.

What cost per hire includes

Cost per hire measures the expense required to produce an accepted hire. A useful internal calculation includes both external spending and the value of employee time used in the search.

Cost per hire = external recruiting costs + internal recruiting costs, divided by hires completed

External costs can include job advertising, agency fees, assessments, background checks, and candidate travel. Internal costs can include recruiter hours, hiring manager interviews, scheduling, reference checks, and offer administration. Onboarding equipment and first-year pay answer a different question, so they should sit outside the recruiting metric.

That separation prevents a common budgeting error. If one estimate includes a laptop, three months of salary, and training while another ends at offer acceptance, the two figures are not comparable even if both are labeled "hiring cost."

A practical 2026 budget model

The following example shows a direct employee search for a general virtual assistant. It is a planning model, not a survey result. The cash inputs should be replaced with the employer's actual vendor prices, and hourly labor values should reflect payroll records.

Both modeled totals fall below SHRM's $5,475 cross-industry average. That is plausible for a nonexecutive support search with a contained interview process, but it is not evidence that every virtual assistant search will cost less. Specialized software skills, multilingual work, regulated data access, or an external recruiting firm can raise the total. A referral or an existing candidate pool can lower it.

Time to fill changes the budget

SHRM's 2025 study puts median time to fill at roughly a month and a half for both executive and nonexecutive positions. LinkedIn reported a 66-day average in February 2025, up from 52 days in 2021. The figures differ partly because one is a median and the other is an average. Employers may also start and stop the clock at different events.

For 2026 planning, a six-to-nine-week range is more honest than a single promise. Define the clock before measuring it. SHRM uses the period from job requisition to offer acceptance. If an internal dashboard starts at job posting or ends on the first day of work, its number should not be compared directly with SHRM's.

Vacancy exposure belongs beside cost per hire, but it should not be folded into the metric without explanation. A vacant assistant position may shift calendar work, inbox coverage, documentation, or customer follow-up to a manager. The cost depends on how much work remains undone and what the covering employees earn.

For example, if a manager absorbs five hours of assistant work each week for eight weeks, the vacancy uses 40 manager hours. At a loaded value of $60 per hour, that is $2,400 in displaced time. This is an employer-specific scenario, not a national statistic. Measuring actual coverage hours gives a better answer than assigning a generic percentage of salary to every vacant role.

Compensation changes the first-year economics

BLS recorded a May 2025 median wage of $48,310 for secretaries and administrative assistants. Within that group, executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants had a $76,590 median. The national occupation included about 3.28 million jobs in the May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics release, while the detailed executive occupation included about 459,910.

Wages are only part of employee compensation. In March 2026, BLS estimated that private-industry employers paid $46.60 per hour in total compensation: $32.60 in wages and $14.01 in benefits. Benefits therefore represented 30.1% of total compensation. Put another way, the aggregate total was about 1.43 times wages.

Applying that aggregate relationship produces a rough compensation comparison:

The modeled compensation figures divide wages by the BLS wage share of 69.9% and round to the nearest $5 or $10. They are not occupation-specific benefit estimates. Benefit access and cost vary by employer size, industry, region, work status, and plan design.

The table also leaves out workspace, equipment, software, training, and vacancy exposure. It is meant to show why the recruiting bill and the first-year employment commitment must be tracked separately.

Payroll tax is not the whole benefit load

The IRS sets the 2026 employer Social Security rate at 6.2% on wages up to $184,500 and the employer Medicare rate at 1.45% with no wage ceiling. Together, those employer FICA rates equal 7.65% for wages below the Social Security cap.

Applying 7.65% to the $48,310 BLS median produces about $3,696 in employer Social Security and Medicare tax. For the $76,590 executive-assistant median, it produces about $5,859. Those calculations exclude federal and state unemployment taxes, workers' compensation, paid leave, health insurance, and retirement benefits.

This is why adding 7.65% to salary does not produce a fully loaded employee cost. It covers two statutory payroll taxes, not the full benefits package measured by BLS.

Direct hire, agency, and managed service comparisons

The recruiting model affects which costs appear on the employer's ledger.

Robert Half describes agency work as including job posting, resume review, initial evaluation, compensation negotiation, and background checks. It also notes that employers pay fees for the service. Its public guidance does not provide one universal percentage, which is a useful warning against treating a commonly quoted agency rate as a fixed benchmark.

A managed service can remove much of the employer's sourcing and screening workload, but the monthly fee is not directly comparable with salary alone. Compare like with like: recruiting, payroll administration, benefits, supervision, replacement coverage, tools, and contract terms. The hire virtual assistant service page explains the managed option, while the virtual assistant cost guide covers broader price drivers.

Where recruiting technology can save time

LinkedIn's 2025 Future of Recruiting report combined platform data with responses from more than 1,000 talent professionals. Talent acquisition professionals already using generative AI reported an average 20% reduction in workload. LinkedIn also found that only 25% felt highly confident in their organization's ability to measure quality of hire.

That 20% figure is a self-reported workload change among users of the technology, not a promise that total cost per hire will fall by 20%. Time saved on drafting outreach or screening may be redirected to structured assessments. For a virtual assistant role, a short paid work sample can test calendar judgment, written communication, and instruction handling more directly than another general interview.

Automation should not remove human review from decisions that affect employment. It should reduce repetitive administration and leave more time for consistent evaluation.

How to build a defensible recruiting benchmark

Use the same definitions for every hire and retain the underlying counts. At minimum, record:

1. External cash expense by vendor and purpose.
2. Recruiter, coordinator, and hiring manager hours.
3. The loaded hourly cost used to value internal labor.
4. Requisition approval date, accepted-offer date, and start date.
5. Applicants screened, candidates interviewed, offers made, and hires started.
6. Role scope, geography, worker classification, and required skills.
7. Ninety-day retention and a role-specific quality measure.

Calculate cost per hire across a group of comparable roles. A single hire can be distorted by a one-time agency fee or a referral that required almost no advertising. A rolling annual view makes the benchmark more useful, especially for a small employer with few hires.

Conclusion

Virtual assistant recruiting cost benchmarks for 2026 point to a $5,475 average nonexecutive cost per hire and a hiring cycle of roughly six to nine weeks as reasonable U.S. planning anchors. Comparable employee wages range from a $48,310 median for secretaries and administrative assistants to $76,590 for executive administrative assistants. BLS compensation data shows that salary alone materially understates the employer commitment.

These are anchors, not price quotes. A reliable budget keeps recruiting expense, vacancy exposure, and first-year compensation in separate lines. It also identifies whether the comparison is a U.S. employee, an independent contractor, an agency placement, or a managed virtual assistant service. That discipline makes the final hiring decision easier to audit and much harder to distort.

References

1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Occupational Outlook Handbook. Wage data for May 2025; page updated August 28, 2026.
2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2025. Released May 15, 2026.
3. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, March 2026. Released June 12, 2026.
4. SHRM. SHRM Releases 2025 Benchmarking Reports. Published October 7, 2025. Survey fielded January 9 to March 3, 2025; 2,371 respondents.
5. LinkedIn Talent Blog. 7 Ways to Reduce Your Time to Fill. Published February 24, 2025.
6. Internal Revenue Service. Publication 15 (2026), Employer's Tax Guide. 2026 employer Social Security and Medicare rates.
7. LinkedIn Talent Blog. How AI Will Redefine Recruiting in 2025. Published February 13, 2025.
8. Robert Half. Hiring? Here's How to Work With an Employment Agency. Accessed September 10, 2026.