Cost Per Hire 2026: The $5,475 Average, Broken Down by Role

Data as of October 2026. Sources: SHRM benchmarking reports (2016, 2022, 2025, 2026), BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025), LinkedIn Future of Recruiting 2025, iCIMS, Workable, Swiss firm survey research. Updated October 2026.

What is cost per hire, and how do you calculate it?

Cost per hire is the total amount you spend on recruiting in a period, divided by the number of people you hired in that same period. It counts the cost of filling the job, not the salary you pay once the person starts.

The standard formula comes from the ANSI/SHRM 06001.2012 cost per hire standard: (internal recruiting costs + external recruiting costs) ÷ total hires. Internal costs are your own recruiter pay, benefits and systems. External costs are what you pay outsiders, such as agencies, job boards and background checks.

SHRM’s own definition in its 2026 benchmarking brief lists what can go into the total: third party agency fees, advertising agency fees, job fairs, online job boards, employee referral costs, travel for applicants and staff, relocation, recruiter pay and benefits, and talent acquisition system costs.

A quick example: $40,000 in internal costs plus $25,000 in external costs, divided by 13 hires, is $5,000 per hire. Our cost per hire calculator does this math for you and splits internal from external spend.

What is the average cost per hire in 2026?

The most recent SHRM average is $5,475 per nonexecutive hire and $35,879 per executive hire. Both come from the SHRM 2025 benchmarking release, published October 15, 2025. That survey reached 2,371 SHRM members between January 9 and March 3, 2025.

SHRM’s newest report, the 2026 Recruiting Executives Benchmarking brief published in June 2026, switched to medians. It puts the median at $1,300 for nonexecutive roles (up from $1,200 in the 2025 report) and $15,000 for executive roles (up from $10,600). It surveyed 4,657 members from November 24, 2025 to January 23, 2026, and its figures cover the 12 months before that.

So there is no single “2026 number.” If you want the typical hire, use the $1,300 median. If you want total recruiting spend spread across every hire, use the $5,475 average. Executives cost nearly seven times as much as other hires on average, according to SHRM.

Where does the $4,700 figure come from?

It is SHRM’s 2022 benchmark. SHRM’s April 2022 Talent Access report showed an average cost per hire of $4,683 and an executive average of $28,329, from survey responses collected April through November 2021. A SHRM news article the same month rounded it to “nearly $4,700.”

Even older pages quote $4,129. That figure is from SHRM’s 2016 benchmarking report and reflects fiscal year 2015. If a vendor page still leads with $4,129 or $4,700, its data is four to ten years old.

Why do cost per hire benchmarks disagree so much?

Mostly because some report averages and some report medians, and a few very expensive searches drag an average up. In SHRM’s 2022 data the average was $4,683 but the median was $1,244, so the typical organization spent about a quarter of the headline figure.

Gartner’s cost per hire research sits behind its client paywall, so we did not use it. We found no free published cost per hire figures from Lighthouse Research or Bersin either.

How much does it cost to hire an executive compared with everyone else?

A lot more, and the gap is widening. SHRM’s median executive cost per hire was $5,000 in its 2017 report, $8,800 in 2022, $10,600 in 2025 and $15,000 in 2026. Over the same years the nonexecutive median barely moved, from $1,600 in 2017 to $1,300 in 2026.

SHRM links the rise to more external hiring at the top. In the 2026 report, large organizations (500 to 4,999 employees) and extra large ones (5,000 or more) filled a median of 100 percent of executive roles externally, up from 75 percent and 50 percent a year earlier.

What is the average cost per hire by industry?

Professional, scientific and technical services has the highest nonexecutive average at $6,464, and accommodation and food service has the lowest at $1,070. These are SHRM Benchmarking Services industry averages as republished by iCIMS in April 2025. The publishers do not state the survey year, so treat them as SHRM’s pre 2025 industry cut.

Notice that executive costs do not follow the same order. Administrative support is second most expensive for nonexecutive hires but cheapest for executives, at $19,847.

How much do recruiting agencies charge per hire?

Contingency recruiters usually charge 20 to 25 percent of first year cash compensation, and retained executive search firms about 33 percent, according to a SHRM search firm article (2016). A 2026 Pin fee guide puts contingency at 15 to 25 percent of first year salary for most roles, rising to 25 to 30 percent for senior or specialist roles, with retained search at 25 to 33 percent.

The table below applies those fee rates to May 2025 BLS median wages.

Work Insiders calculation. Wages: BLS OEWS Table 1, May 2025 national medians, annualized at 2,080 hours. Agencies usually charge on first year cash compensation including bonus, so real fees on bonus eligible roles run higher.

The math shows why agency use moves your average so much. A 20 percent fee on a median human resources specialist is $15,188, almost three times SHRM’s $5,475 nonexecutive average. For a median software developer it is $27,198.

What this means for recruiters

If you run an agency, your fee is the single biggest line in a client’s cost per hire. Clients who track the metric will compare you with their internal cost of roughly $1,300 to $5,475 per hire. Lead with time to fill and quality, not price. Our guide to time to hire has the speed benchmarks to back that up.

Does company size change cost per hire?

SHRM segments its benchmarks by organization size, but the size cuts sit in the member only report, and the public 2026 brief does not give cost per hire by size. What it does show is workload: the median recruiter carried 25 requisitions in the 2026 report, up from 20, and at extra large organizations it jumped from 60 to 100.

The best public evidence on size comes from economists. A study of Swiss firms (survey year 2009, published 2018) found average hiring costs for skilled workers of about 18,800 Swiss francs at firms under 50 employees and about 28,900 francs at firms of 50 or more. The authors note one franc was roughly one US dollar in 2009. Those figures include training and lost output, not just recruiting spend.

What actually makes up the cost of a hire?

Recruiting spend is only the visible slice. In the Swiss research, search costs (job ads plus interview time) were 21 percent of the full cost of a skilled hire. Adaptation costs, meaning the new hire’s low early output and formal training, were 53 percent. Disruption, the time coworkers spend showing the new person the ropes, was 26 percent.

That is why a SHRM style cost per hire never captures the whole bill. The same study measured total hiring costs at about 16 weeks of wages per skilled hire, on average.

Inside the recruiting slice itself, SHRM’s 2025 report found that recruiting takes an average of 26 percent of the total HR budget, with a median of 20 percent. A quarter of organizations spend 10 percent or less, and a quarter spend 39 percent or more.

Does AI lower cost per hire?

There is good evidence AI saves recruiter time, but we found no independent, published benchmark showing a measured drop in cost per hire from AI. Treat vendor claims of 30 to 80 percent savings with caution unless they show their method.

Here is what the sourced data says. LinkedIn’s 2025 Future of Recruiting survey of 1,271 recruiting professionals (fielded September 2024) found that talent pros using generative AI save about 20 percent of their workweek. 37 percent said they were experimenting with or integrating generative AI.

SHRM’s 2026 brief found the nonexecutive median time to fill fell from 44 days to 39 days. SHRM says AI use in recruiting may be contributing, and that organizations with the most effective recruiting practices, which lean on technology including AI, fill roles five days faster.

Recruiter time is an internal cost, so time saved can lower cost per hire, but only if it lets you hire more people with the same team or avoid an agency fee. Our software ROI calculator shows that tradeoff in dollars, and our recruiting software directory lists the tools.

How can I cut my cost per hire without hurting quality?

Hire internally first

SHRM found nonexecutive roles are now filled externally at a median of 97 percent, and recommends internal upskilling and leadership development to curb rising executive costs.

Put pay in the job title

An Appcast analysis of 10.8 million job ads, reported by SHRM in 2022, found cost per click was about 35 percent lower when pay appeared in the job title. In education and health care the gap was 53 and 52 percent.

Negotiate agency terms instead of just the rate

Volume commitments, faster payment and shorter candidate ownership windows are all levers. On a $97,552 nursing salary, every point off a contingency fee saves about $976.

Track it next to quality of hire

Only 20 percent of organizations measure quality of hire, per SHRM. A cheap hire who leaves in three months costs far more; see our breakdown of bad hire costs.

Ready to find your own number? Plug your internal and external spend into the Work Insiders calculator and compare it with the benchmarks above.

How we built this page

We read SHRM’s own pages for every SHRM figure: the 2026 Recruiting Executives Benchmarking brief (published June 2026), the October 15, 2025 press release, the April 2022 benchmarking launch article and the August 2016 report article. Wage figures are BLS OEWS May 2025 national medians. Agency fee percentages come from SHRM (2016) and a 2026 Pin fee guide. Industry figures are SHRM Benchmarking Services data as republished by iCIMS (April 2025), because SHRM keeps those cuts behind its member login. Cost components and firm size data come from Swiss firm survey research by Muehlemann and Strupler Leiser. Fee dollar amounts are Work Insiders calculations. Gartner benchmarks are paywalled and were not used. Definitions of terms are in our recruiting glossary.

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