Vacancy Cost Calculator: What an Open Role Costs Per Day

What is vacancy cost?

Vacancy cost is the value a business loses while a role sits empty. The work either does not get done, gets done late, or gets pushed onto colleagues who then do less of their own job. Recruiters use it to turn a slow search into a dollar figure a hiring manager or finance leader understands.

It is an estimate, not an accounting number. Nobody can measure exactly what an empty seat costs. What you can do is show a defensible range. This calculator gives two: a salary basis, which assumes the role is worth at least what you pay for it, and a revenue basis, which assumes the role contributes its share of company revenue.

The point is not precision. The point is to make delay visible. Ten extra days waiting for interview feedback has a cost, and naming it changes how fast people respond.

How do you calculate vacancy cost step by step?

Use salary for support functions and revenue per employee for roles that directly produce revenue, such as sales, billable consultants or agency recruiters. For a revenue role you can also replace revenue per employee with the role's own quota or billing target.

1. Take the annual salary for the role, and if you have it, annual company revenue divided by headcount.
2. Divide each by the number of working days in a year to get a daily value.
3. Estimate what share of the work colleagues are covering. Reduce the daily value by that share.
4. Convert calendar days open into working days by multiplying by working days per year and dividing by 365.
5. Multiply the adjusted daily value by working days open for the total.
6. Present both totals as a range, and say which one fits the role better.

What does a vacancy cost example look like?

A role pays 85,000 dollars a year, the company brings in 250,000 dollars of revenue per employee, and the team covers about a quarter of the work while the seat is empty. The search takes 39 calendar days. These are illustrative numbers.

On a salary basis the empty seat costs about 245 dollars per working day and about 6,800 dollars over the search. On a revenue basis it costs about 721 dollars per working day and about 20,000 dollars in total. Each week saved in the process is worth roughly 1,200 to 3,600 dollars.

What is a typical vacancy cost?

There is no reliable public benchmark for vacancy cost itself, because it depends entirely on the role and the business. Treat any single industry figure you see with caution and use your own salary and revenue data instead.

The input that drives the total most is how long the role stays open, and that one does have a benchmark. SHRM's 2026 Recruiting Executives Benchmarking report gives a median time to fill of 39 calendar days for nonexecutive positions, which is the calculator's default. Executive and specialist searches usually take longer, so use your own time to fill data where you have it.

Revenue per employee varies hugely by industry. A software company and a restaurant group can differ by a factor of ten, which is why the calculator asks you to enter your own number.

Which roles have the highest vacancy cost?

Roles that produce revenue directly have the clearest vacancy cost: account executives, billable consultants, agency recruiters, clinicians who bill for visits and field technicians who complete paid jobs. For these, the role's quota or average billings is a better input than company revenue per employee, because it reflects what that seat actually produces.

Roles that hold up other people's work come next. A missing engineering lead can slow a whole team, and a missing payroll specialist creates risk every pay cycle. The daily cost here is harder to pin down, so use the salary basis and describe the knock on effects in words.

Roles with plenty of coverage, such as one of twenty similar customer support agents, have the lowest vacancy cost per seat. The cost still adds up when several seats are open at once, so calculate it for the group rather than one opening at a time.

Agencies can use the same math with clients. Showing a client what each week of delay costs makes a strong case for faster feedback and fewer interview rounds.

How do you reduce vacancy cost?

• Open the requisition earlier. Start the search when someone gives notice, not after they leave.
• Keep a warm pipeline for roles you hire every year, so each search starts with candidates already engaged.
• Set service levels with hiring managers: feedback within one business day and interview slots booked in advance.
• Cut stages that do not change decisions. Every extra interview round adds days.
• Use the daily cost figure in intake meetings to agree a target start date and to justify agency or sourcing spend on critical roles.

What mistakes should you avoid?

• Presenting the revenue figure as fact. It is an upper estimate, and finance teams will push back if you treat it as lost revenue.
• Counting calendar days as working days, which overstates the cost by about 40%.
• Ignoring coverage. Teams usually absorb some of the work, though often at the cost of burnout and overtime.
• Adding vacancy cost to cost per hire. They measure different things, and adding them double counts.
• Using one daily cost for every role. A vacant nurse, a vacant account executive and a vacant analyst cost very different amounts.