Price the placement. Then get paid weekly.
Set your bill rate, see your true cost per hour, and project profit on the whole contract. Then the number most pricing tools skip: how much payroll you will front before your first invoice pays.
1. Pay, markup, bill rate
Start from a vertical preset or enter your own. Edit any field and the others keep up. Editing bill rate recalculates your markup.
2. Burden: your true cost of labor
Statutory and other costs as a percentage of pay. Defaults are typical planning figures; your workers’ comp and state unemployment rates vary by state and class code.
3. The contract
Project it across the whole placement.
Deducted from your bill rate by VMS/MSP programs. Enter 0 if none.
at a 0% gross margin
Have your Integra quote? Add it under “Other” in step 2 (Burden) to see it in your margin. Every charge is disclosed before you sign.
Illustrative estimates from your inputs and the stated assumptions. Not a quote.
Bill rate = Pay × (1 + Markup)Markup is applied to the pay rate. It is not your profit; burden comes out of it first.
True cost = Pay × (1 + Burden)Workers’ comp, employer FICA, FUTA, SUTA, and benefits: what an hour actually costs you.
Gross profit = Bill − True costPer hour. Divide by the bill rate for your gross margin percentage.
Where your numbers should land.
Commonly cited planning ranges across the U.S. staffing industry. Your market, vertical, and client mix decide where you sit inside them.
Varies with role difficulty, risk, and market. Higher-touch and higher-risk placements justify the top of the range.
Of the employee’s first-year gross salary, as a one-time direct-hire fee.
Typical spread for temp staffing firms; roughly 25% is a common aggregate average.
After overhead. Skill-scarce verticals like IT and healthcare tend toward the high end.
Pricing shifts with the work.
Light industrial
Highest workers’ comp burden and the most turnover. Budget for elevated burden and redeployment costs, win on speed to fill, and hold a disciplined markup; thin pricing here gets eaten by claims and churn.
Clerical & administrative
Moderate pay, moderate burden, competitive markets. The margin lives in process efficiency: clean onboarding, low fall-offs, and markups that are sustainable rather than merely winnable.
Healthcare
Credentialing, screening, and no-start risk belong in the price, not in overhead. Faster response commands a premium; on-call coverage and compliance overhead justify the higher end of markup ranges.
IT & professional
High pay rates flip the math: markup percentages run lower, but the dollar spread per hour is larger and assignments run longer. Sell niche expertise and quality of match, not rate.
Five mistakes that quietly eat the margin.
- Pricing to a markup number instead of a margin target. The same 50% markup produces very different margins once burden, fees, and terms differ. Set the gross margin you need, in dollars and percent, and let markup follow.
- Underestimating burden. Workers’ comp class codes, SUTA experience ratings, and claims history move the number more than most owners expect. A two-point miss on burden is a two-point miss on margin.
- One markup for every client. Volume, fill difficulty, turnover, location, and payment terms all differ; identical pricing means your easiest client subsidizes your hardest one.
- Forgetting direct assignment costs. Background checks, drug screens, credentialing, and onboarding time are per-placement costs. If they are not in the price, they come out of the profit.
- Ignoring MSP/VMS fees and long terms. A 2–3% VMS fee is a cost of sale, and terms that often run well beyond Net 30 stretch the payroll you front from weeks into months. Both hit your cash before they ever show up in your P&L.
Staffing pricing, answered.
What should my gross margin be?
Most temp staffing firms land between 14% and 41%, with roughly 25% a common aggregate average. Where you should sit depends on vertical, risk, and service level; the discipline is to pick a target in both dollars and percent, and price each deal back from it.
What is the difference between markup and margin?
Markup is (bill rate − pay rate) ÷ pay rate. Gross margin is bill rate minus your true cost of labor (pay plus burden), expressed in dollars or as a percent of the bill rate. Two deals with the same markup can carry very different margins once burden, VMS fees, and terms differ, which is why pricing to markup alone is the classic mistake.
Are statutory costs the same everywhere?
No. Employer FICA is fixed at 7.65%, but FUTA credits, state unemployment rates, and workers’ comp premiums vary by state, class code, and your own claims and experience history. Rebuild your burden number whenever you enter a new state or class of work.
How do MSP/VMS fees change my pricing?
Treat them as a cost of sale: a 2–3% fee comes straight off your effective bill rate, so a deal priced to a healthy markup can land under your margin target after the fee. Model the fee and the program’s payment terms together; VMS programs often pay slower, which raises the payroll you front as well.
Should every client get the same markup?
No. Higher volume can earn a sharper rate; hard-to-fill roles, high turnover, difficult locations, and slow payment terms should all price higher. Customize per client and revisit at least annually, or any time pay rates, burden, or contract economics shift.
What if clients push back on my rates?
Before cutting price, cut controllable cost: safety and claims management to lower workers’ comp, SUTA management, cleaner onboarding, fewer fall-offs, and tighter collections. Then look at cash: if the real constraint is fronting payroll while you wait 30+ days on invoices, payroll funding on your receivables lets you take growth at a fair rate instead of discounting to get paid sooner.
How do staffing firms cover payroll while invoices are outstanding?
That gap is the industry’s defining cash-flow problem: payroll is weekly, receivables are Net 30+. Firms bridge it with working capital, a line of credit, or invoice-based payroll funding: selling approved invoices for same-week cash. That is exactly what Integra does for staffing firms, so the contract you just priced never has to wait on the calendar.
Estimates for planning purposes only; not tax, legal, or accounting advice. Statutory burden costs vary by state, class code, and claims history. Payroll float estimate assumes weekly payroll and 30-day customer terms with typical processing time. Industry ranges shown are commonly cited planning benchmarks, not a promise of what your market will bear. Talk to a real person at Integra for numbers specific to your firm.