What a U.S. back-office hire really costs in 2026
Salary is roughly 60% of what an employee costs. This is the other 40%, broken out line by line, with the rate behind each number.
The short version
Take an appointment setter at a $54,000 base salary. By the time the person is productive, the fully loaded annual cost is closer to $90,000. The difference is not overhead anyone chose — most of it is mandatory.
| Line | Rate | Annual | Who sets it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base salary | — | $54,000 | You |
| Social Security + Medicare (FICA) | 7.65% of wages | $4,131 | IRS · mandatory |
| Unemployment + workers' comp | ~3.5% combined | $1,890 | Federal + state · mandatory |
| Health insurance, employer share | Single coverage average | $7,885 | Market · effectively mandatory |
| 401(k) match | 4% typical | $2,160 | You, but market expects it |
| Paid time off accrued | 15 days | $3,116 | Market |
| Tools, management and recruiting | Remainder | $16,818 | You |
| Fully loaded | $90,000 |
Why the mandatory part is the one that matters
You can negotiate salary, cut the 401(k) match or trim tooling. You cannot negotiate FICA, unemployment insurance or workers' compensation. That block — around $19,182 a year on this salary — is the floor under every U.S. hire, and it is the part that disappears entirely when the employment sits in another country under a vendor that carries it.
What the same role costs nearshore
The same appointment setter through Kurios runs $33,600 a year, all in: employment, payroll, benefits and compliance in-country, recruiting, training, ongoing management, the AI licence and free replacement. The difference is $56,400 a year, or 63%.
That is the honest arithmetic, and it is also the reason this page exists: most vendors compare their monthly fee against a U.S. salary, which flatters them and makes you look unprepared in front of a CFO. Compare against the fully loaded number instead.
Sources and how to check it
- FICA 7.65% — employer share of Social Security (6.2%) and Medicare (1.45%). IRS Publication 15.
- Unemployment and workers' comp — FUTA is federal, SUTA and workers' comp vary by state and by claims history. 3.5% combined is a mid-range estimate; your own rate is on your payroll report.
- Health insurance — employer contribution for single coverage, national average. KFF Employer Health Benefits Survey.
- PTO — 15 accrued days valued at the daily wage rate. Bureau of Labor Statistics benefits data.
Run the same lines against your own payroll report. If your numbers come out lower, use yours — the point of this page is the structure, not our estimate.
Run it for your own role
The calculator does this breakdown for any of the thirteen roles, with the nearshore comparison beside it.
The four costs that never appear in the salary line
Recruiting. Agency fees run 15 to 25 percent of first-year salary. Doing it yourself is cheaper in cash and expensive in time: screening, scheduling and interviewing a single back-office role routinely consumes 30 to 40 hours of someone senior.
The empty seat. A role that takes 60 days to fill is 60 days of that work not happening, or happening badly by someone who already had a job. This is the largest cost in the list and the one nobody books.
Ramp. Almost nobody is productive on day one. A back-office hire typically reaches full output somewhere between weeks six and twelve. You pay full salary throughout.
The failed hire. Industry estimates put the cost of a bad hire between half and twice the annual salary once you count severance, lost output, the re-hire and the damage to the team. Roughly one in five hires does not make it past the first year.
What the nearshore comparison actually looks like
Compare fully loaded against fully loaded, and count the same four items on both sides. On the nearshore side, recruiting is included, the empty seat is shorter because deployment runs in weeks rather than months, ramp still exists but training happens before day one, and the failed hire is replaced at no cost with the playbook already written.
That last point is worth more than it looks. The reason a failed hire is so expensive is that everything learned in the role leaves with the person. When the documentation stays, the replacement starts at week six instead of week one.
Where this comparison stops working
If the role requires a U.S. professional licence, physical presence, or a security clearance, the comparison is void and no amount of arithmetic changes it. If the role is genuinely asynchronous and cost is the only variable, offshore is cheaper than nearshore and we will tell you so.
And if the process the person would inherit has never been written down, the honest answer is that no hire fixes that. A remote hire will expose the gap faster than a local one, which is useful information and an unpleasant surprise.
How to run the numbers for your own case
Take the base salary you would pay. Add the mandatory employer burden for your state. Add your benefits cost per employee. Add accrued paid time off as a fraction of salary. Add recruiting, amortised. Divide by twelve. That is the monthly number to compare, and it is usually 30 to 40 percent above the salary line before anyone has recruited, trained or managed the person.
Then do the same on the nearshore side, which is simpler because it is one figure. Compare those two. Any vendor quoting you a flat savings percentage across all roles is quoting marketing, not accounting.
Questions this raises
Does the burden percentage vary much by state?
Yes, materially. Unemployment insurance rates and workers' compensation differ by state and by industry classification, and some states add their own payroll taxes. Use your own numbers rather than a national average.
What about the cost of managing a remote person?
Real and worth counting, though in practice it is similar to managing anyone in a distributed team. The overhead that does disappear is payroll, benefits administration and compliance, which stays with the in-country employer.
Is there a role size where this stops being worth it?
Below roughly one full-time role, yes. If the work is ten hours a week you want a contractor or better tooling, not a team member, and we will say so on the call.