Workforce Cost Guide

Staffing vs. Hiring

The markup isn’t the math.

A staffing bill rate looks expensive next to an hourly wage — but a wage isn't what an employee costs. Put both options on the same yardstick, total cost per productive hour, and the gap nearly disappears. Which side wins comes down to two things: how long your hires stay, and how steady your demand really is.

1

It costs less than it looks

A 40% markup reads expensive next to a wage — but a wage isn’t what an employee costs. At real-world tenure and utilization, staffing matches or beats a permanent hire’s true cost.

Dead even by month 12 — cheaper any shorter
2

Try the fit before you hire

Temp-to-hire means you watch the person do the actual job — attendance, quality, fit — before you ever extend an offer. Convert the keepers to your payroll whenever you’re ready.

The mis-hire risk moves off your books
3

Scale without the risk

Headcount that flexes with your demand — the invoice stops when the work does. Workers’ comp, unemployment claims, and employer compliance sit on our payroll, not yours.

Pay only for hours worked
Step 1 — Tenure

Slide across tenure. Watch the math flip.

A staffing rate is flat — if a worker stays three weeks or three years, re-recruiting is our cost, not yours. A permanent hire’s true hourly cost depends on how long they stay, because acquisition costs are spread over every hour they work. Move your cursor across the chart to see both numbers at any tenure.

Permanent hire — true cost / productive hr Staffing — all-in rate (flat)
12 months
View the numbers
Step 2 — Same yardstick

What a wage actually costs

Every cost below exists no matter who employs the worker — taxes, insurance, benefits, recruiting, training, covering the empty seat. The only question is which invoice it shows up on. The stack tracks the tenure you set in Step 1 — hover it to see each piece.

01
The wage is only ~70% of what an employer pays. Benefits alone average 30% of total compensation nationally (BLS).
02
Hiring costs are sunk on day one — recruiting, screening, the empty-seat overtime, the training ramp. They only pay off if the person stays.
03
The markup mostly restates these costs. Payroll taxes, workers’ comp, unemployment, and recruiting live inside the bill rate — it’s the same burden, made visible on one line.
12 months
Step 3 — Utilization

The 50-week test

A permanent hire is a fixed cost: the seat is paid for whether the line is running or not. A staffing worker is a variable cost: the invoice stops when the assignment stops. That difference sets a hard threshold — here’s how much of the year a permanently-hired seat must stay genuinely productive just to match the staffing rate.

Light industrial / warehouse96.2% — 50 of 52 weeks
Two slow weeks — a trough, a changeover, a delayed program — and the permanent hire costs more.
Clerical / administrative94.2% — 49 of 52 weeks
Three slow weeks absorb the entire advantage of employing permanently.
Skilled trades / maintenance92.3% — 48 of 52 weeks
Higher wages buy a little more headroom — but four slow weeks is still a thin margin for project-based work.
What it adds up to

One floor, three strategies

A modeled operation that needs 70 seats year-round and peaks to 100 seats for four months. Same work, same wages — three ways to staff it.

A · Hire all 100 directly, carry year-round — pays for idle seats$4.80M
Includes $934K of idle capacity — 30 seats carried for 8 months with no work in them (striped).
C · 70 direct + 30 seasonal hires & layoffs — churn with consequences$3.93M
Re-recruiting 30 people every cycle, plus an unemployment-tax penalty that hits the entire payroll.
B · 70 direct core + 30 staffing flex, 4 months — pay only for hours worked$3.85M
The permanent core stays stable; the swing is variable cost that ends when the peak ends.
Core + flex saves $941,000 a year — 19.6% — vs. carrying the peak on payroll.
The honest answer

Sometimes permanent hire wins. Here’s exactly when.

We’re a staffing company telling you staffing isn’t always the answer — because the math isn’t, and you’ll trust the rest of this page more for it. Run each role through this screen.

Hire permanently when…

Stable demand, long tenure — payroll is the cheaper instrument.
  • ✓
    Expected tenure is over 24 months
  • ✓
    The seat stays productive 95%+ of the year
  • ✓
    The role holds institutional or proprietary knowledge
  • ✓
    Demand is year-round and proven, not seasonal or new

Use a staffing partner when…

Variable, urgent, or unproven demand — fixed costs will eat you.
  • ✓
    Expected tenure is under 12 months, or role turnover runs above 60%
  • ✓
    The seat is fully utilized less than ~90% of the year
  • ✓
    Demand is seasonal, project-based, or volume-driven
  • ✓
    You need people in under three weeks, or want to evaluate before you commit (temp-to-hire)
Most operations need both. Size the permanent core to your trough — not your peak — and flex the difference. That structure is both the lowest-cost answer and the most stable core workforce, because the core never has to shed a peak it shouldn’t have been carrying.
Fair questions

The three pushbacks we hear most

+“We can recruit these roles ourselves for less.”
The model already assumes you can, at published benchmark cost. Direct hiring still loses below the break-even tenure, because recruiting is only about 40% of what a hire costs to acquire — vacancy overtime, the training ramp, trainer time, and onboarding make up the rest. Those costs don’t fall when recruiting gets cheaper. They fall when people stay longer.
+“Temporary workers are lower quality.”
Measure it rather than assume it: fill quality, attendance, safety, and conversion rate, against your own permanent hires over the same period. Roughly 2.4 million people work through U.S. staffing firms in an average week — 40% in higher-skilled occupations. And temp-to-hire gives you something a permanent offer can’t: you watch the person do the actual job before you commit. The mis-hire risk doesn’t disappear — it moves off your balance sheet.
+“We’d rather build a stable, permanent workforce.”
So would we — that’s what the core-and-flex structure protects. Stability is a property of the demand, not the hiring paperwork: hiring someone permanently into a seasonal seat doesn’t make the season longer. Put permanent people on permanent demand, flex the rest, and convert flex workers to your payroll when the demand behind them proves durable.
Where we work

The math is tighter in Dallas–Fort Worth

A labor market this tight makes every vacancy longer and every mis-hire dearer — which moves the break-even further out of reach for high-turnover roles. It’s the market we’ve staffed from six Metroplex branches: Arlington, Burleson, Carrollton, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Saginaw.

3.8%
DFW unemployment vs. 4.0% nationally — a tighter candidate pool (BLS, June 2026)
4.36M
DFW nonfarm jobs, growing +1.3% year over year
895,600
workers in trade, transportation & utilities — the region’s high-volume, high-turnover engine
0.32–6.32%
Texas unemployment-tax range — heavy hire-and-layoff cycles push you up the band on every covered employee
No pressure, just arithmetic

Run the numbers on your workforce

Bring us your wages, turnover, and seasonality. We’ll model your break-even the same way this page does — and tell you honestly which seats belong on your payroll, and which don’t.

Call Our Head of Sales · (817) 226-6582 Request a cost model
We staff the people who build, move & make.