15 Hiring Statistics

The average cost-per-hire reported in SHRM benchmarking data was nearly $4,700.

Cost-per-hire covers advertising, recruiter time, screening, and onboarding. It is a useful floor for what an open seat costs before the new hire produces anything.

SHRM reports that executive hires cost on average nearly seven times more than nonexecutive hires.

Seniority changes the math sharply. Budgeting one blended cost-per-hire across all roles understates the true cost of senior recruiting.

The time to fill an open position continues to run about a month and a half, with screening and interviewing each averaging 8 to 9 days.

Six weeks of vacancy is lost output, not just recruiting cost. Time-to-fill is often the binding constraint, well ahead of the cash cost of hiring.

Total employer compensation costs for private-industry workers averaged $46.15 per hour worked in December 2025.

This is the all-in hourly cost of an employee, not the wage rate. It is the right baseline for estimating what a role actually costs the business.

Wages and salaries accounted for 70.1 percent of private-industry employer costs in December 2025, while benefits made up the remaining 29.9 percent.

Benefits add roughly 30 percent on top of pay. A $60,000 salary carries close to $25,000 in additional employer cost at this ratio.

Legally required benefits, such as Social Security and unemployment insurance, averaged $2.19 per hour worked and accounted for 8.3 percent of private-industry employer costs in December 2025.

Some of the benefit load is mandatory and unavoidable. This portion cannot be negotiated away when modeling the cost of a hire.

Private-industry wages and salaries rose 3.5 percent over the year ending September 2025, while benefit costs rose 3.8 percent.

Benefit costs are climbing slightly faster than wages. Hiring budgets built on last year's numbers drift out of date within a year.

U.S. employers made 5.6 million hires in March 2026, a hires rate of 3.5 percent of total employment.

Hiring volume sets the competitive backdrop. A 3.5 percent monthly hires rate is the pool every employer is competing inside.

Total separations were 5.4 million in March 2026, a rate of 3.4 percent, with quits at 3.2 million, or a 2.0 percent quits rate.

Separations nearly match hires, so much hiring just replaces departures. The quits rate is a direct read on voluntary turnover pressure.

Layoffs and discharges totaled 1.9 million in March 2026, a rate of 1.2 percent of total employment.

Involuntary separations remain a small share of total turnover. Most movement in the labor market is voluntary, not employer-driven cuts.

In the first quarter of 2024, 22.9 percent of people at work teleworked or worked at home for pay, up from 19.6 percent a year earlier.

Remote eligibility is now a standard part of the hiring offer for many roles. The share working from home is rising again after the post-peak decline.

The share of teleworkers who worked from home for all their hours fell from 54.0 percent in early 2023 to 47.9 percent in early 2024.

Fully remote roles are giving way to hybrid arrangements. Candidates increasingly expect some remote option rather than all-or-nothing.

Telework rates climb with education: 43.6 percent of workers with an advanced degree teleworked in early 2024, versus 8.5 percent of those whose highest credential was a high school diploma.

Remote-work expectations vary sharply by role type. Hiring for high-credential positions usually means competing on flexibility, not just pay.

From March 2023 to March 2024, U.S. small businesses opened 1.1 million new establishments and created a net increase of 1.2 million jobs.

Small employers drive most net hiring. The volume of new establishments shows where a large share of entry-level hiring happens.

Small businesses employ 62.3 million people, or 45.9 percent of private-sector workers.

Close to half of private-sector hiring happens at firms with fewer than 500 employees. National turnover rates apply to small employers too.