What should a staffing agency bill per hour?
An agency that pays a bartender $20 an hour needs to bill about $32.30 an hour in Texas to keep a 30% gross margin. The extra $12.30 covers $2.61 of employer taxes and insurance and $9.69 of profit. The calculator above does this sum for your state and role, and shows markup and margin side by side.
What is the difference between a pay rate and a bill rate?
The pay rate is what the worker earns per hour. The bill rate is what the client pays the agency per hour. The gap between them is not all profit. First it pays the employer costs of putting someone on payroll: Social Security and Medicare, two kinds of unemployment tax, workers' comp, liability insurance and paid sick leave where the law requires it. Whatever is left is gross profit. Agencies call the employer costs the burden, and the pay plus the burden the loaded cost.
- Pay rate. What the worker earns per hour, before their own taxes.
- Loaded cost. Pay plus every cost the employer pays on top of it. This is your break-even bill rate.
- Bill rate. What the client pays per hour. Gross profit is the bill rate minus the loaded cost.
Markup vs margin: why a 50% markup is not a 50% margin
Markup is profit as a share of cost. Margin is profit as a share of the bill rate. They are never the same number unless profit is zero. A 50% markup on a $20 pay rate bills $30, and the $10 of profit is only 33.3% of $30. Once you add burden, the real margin is lower again.
| Markup on cost | Gross margin | Bill rate on a $20 cost |
|---|---|---|
| 20% | 16.7% | $24.00 |
| 25% | 20.0% | $25.00 |
| 30% | 23.1% | $26.00 |
| 40% | 28.6% | $28.00 |
| 50% | 33.3% | $30.00 |
| 75% | 42.9% | $35.00 |
| 100% | 50.0% | $40.00 |
The formula that avoids the trap is bill rate = loaded cost ÷ (1 − margin). To keep 30% of every billed dollar, divide your loaded cost by 0.70. Do not multiply pay by 1.30.
What is a typical staffing agency markup?
Staffing Industry Analysts found that 14 public staffing firms in North America averaged a 26.2% gross margin in 2025. A 26.2% margin is a markup of 35.5% on cost. Those firms mix many kinds of work, so treat it as a reference point, not a target. We found no source that publishes event or hospitality staffing margins on their own. Light industrial is often quoted at 25% to 28%, but the sources for that range are consultancy and blog pages, not survey data.
Your own target depends on your costs and your mix of work. The calculator lets you set any margin and shows what it does to the bill rate and to your markup.
What is inside an agency's burden?
Seven lines make up the burden. The calculator pre-fills each one for your state and role, and every one can be edited. Employer payroll tax on pay is 7.65% everywhere (Social Security 6.2% plus Medicare 1.45%). The rest depends on where the worker is and what they do.
- Social Security and Medicare
The employer share is 6.2% and 1.45% of wages. The 6.2% stops at a yearly wage of $184,500 in 2026, which part-time event staff rarely reach.
- Federal unemployment (FUTA)
6.0% less a 5.4% credit leaves 0.6% on the first $7,000 a worker earns in a year. California employers paid 1.2% more for 2025 because the state had not repaid its federal loan.
- State unemployment
A new-employer rate on a state wage base that runs from $7,000 in California and Florida to $78,200 in Washington. The calculator spreads it over the hours a worker does in a year, using the yearly pay you enter.
- Workers' comp
Charged per $100 of pay. The calculator assumes bartending, security and setup work cost more to insure than check-in or promo work, and the state index makes the same job cost more in New Jersey and California than in Texas or Ohio.
- Liability and other insurance
General liability and any cover priced on payroll. Use your own quote.
- Paid sick leave
Where a state law applies, the worker earns paid time at a fixed ratio, such as 1 hour for every 30 worked.
- Payroll and admin
Optional. Payroll processing, health act reporting and screening costs you want built into the rate.
How much does the state change the bill rate?
A lot, even for the same job. The table prices the same $20-an-hour bartender at a 30% margin in five states, using each state's new-employer unemployment rate, workers' comp cost index and sick leave rule.
| State | Employer costs per hour | Loaded cost | Bill rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | $4.16 | $24.16 | $34.51 |
| California | $3.76 | $23.76 | $33.94 |
| Washington | $3.18 | $23.18 | $33.12 |
| Texas | $2.61 | $22.61 | $32.30 |
| Florida | $2.60 | $22.60 | $32.29 |
The spread is about $2.20 an hour, or $89 on a 40-hour week for one worker. Sick leave (California, New York and Washington), workers' comp and state unemployment tax cause it. Florida and Texas have no state sick leave law.
Why does a $20-an-hour bartender cost the client $32 to $38?
Because the client pays for the burden and the agency's profit, not only the wage. At a 30% margin the bill rate is $32.30. At 35% it is $34.78 and at 40% it is $37.68. Those are the numbers behind the common range. Here is the full sum for Texas.
A $20 bartender in Texas at a 30% gross margin
- Pay: $20.00 an hour.
- Employer costs: Social Security $1.24, Medicare $0.29, federal unemployment $0.08, state unemployment $0.49, workers' comp $0.36 and liability $0.15. That is $2.61, or 13.0% of pay.
- Loaded cost: $20.00 + $2.61 = $22.61. This is the break-even bill rate.
- Bill rate: $22.61 ÷ (1 − 0.30) = $32.30 an hour. Gross profit is $9.69 an hour.
- Markup: that is 61.5% on pay and 42.9% on loaded cost. A 50% markup on pay would bill $30.00 and earn only a 24.6% margin.
- If the client takes $2 off: $30.30 an hour, and the margin falls from 30.0% to 25.4%.
How does overtime change the bill rate?
Overtime pay is 1.5 times the regular rate, so a $20 worker costs $30 an hour in pay. Social Security, Medicare, workers' comp and the other payroll-based costs rise with it. The two unemployment taxes do not, because they stop after a set amount of pay. In the Texas example, overtime loads to $33.63 an hour, and holding a 30% margin needs $48.04 an hour.
A flat 1.5 times the regular bill rate gives $48.45 and a 30.6% margin, which is close. The mistake to avoid is billing the regular rate plus only the extra half of the pay ($10.00). That brings in $42.30 and drops the margin to 20.5%.
10 bartenders, 8 hours each, 2 of those hours at overtime
- Revenue: 10 × (6 hours × $32.30 + 2 hours × $48.04) = $2,899.
- Labor cost: 10 × (6 hours × $22.61 + 2 hours × $33.63) = $2,029.
- Gross profit: $870, a 30.0% margin. With no overtime the same 80 hours bill $2,584 and earn $775.
Does paid sick leave add to the rate?
Yes, in states and cities that require it. The common rule is 1 hour of paid leave for every 30 hours worked, which is 3.33% of pay, or about $0.67 on a $20 hour. The calculator counts the full accrual as a cost, which is the safe way to price. Some cities add their own rules on top of the state law, so check yours.
- 1 hour per 30 worked
Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Oregon.
- 1 hour per 40 worked
Illinois, Maine and Washington.
- Slower accrual
Rhode Island 1 per 35, Nevada and Vermont about 1 per 52, and Washington, DC from 1 per 37 to 1 per 87 depending on employer size. The calculator uses 1 per 37 for DC.
- No state law
Most other states. The calculator sets the line to 0, and you can type a number if you offer leave anyway.
A state law usually caps the hours a worker can earn or use in a year, often 40. A part-time event worker rarely gets near the cap, so the calculator does not apply one.
How is this different from other bill rate calculators?
Many online calculators ask for one burden percentage and leave you to guess it. One well-known example fills in 12% for every job. Here the burden is built line by line from your state and role, every line is editable, and markup, margin and the break-even rate sit side by side. For more pricing and hiring tools, see the free tools and the learning guides.