Virtual Assistant vs Hiring an Employee: The Real Cost of Each

When founders think about hiring support, they picture an employee. But for most small businesses the real question is: would a part-time remote contractor get me the same result for a fraction of the cost? Let’s look at the actual numbers.

What a US in-house employee really costs

If you add up salary plus benefits, payroll tax, and overhead, a US administrative employee runs to roughly $65,000 a year once everything is included — benefits, payroll tax, and the rest.[4] And that’s before you count hiring time, onboarding, equipment, software licenses, and the liability that comes with an employment relationship.

The uncomfortable math is that many SMBs don’t need 40 hours of support. They need 10 to 20 hours of focused, reliable help. Paying a full-time, fully-loaded employee for that is paying for a lot you’re not using.

What a virtual assistant costs

Virtual assistant rates span a wide band — from under $5/hour up to $75+/hour depending on specialization.[4] To make that concrete:

• General administrative support clusters around $19–$45 per hour.
• Specialists and executive assistants push the ceiling to $75/hour or more.
• A common structure is a monthly retainer: depending on scope, retainers typically land in the $500–$1,500/month range for meaningful part-time support.[4]

The reason the range is so wide is exactly what you’re paying for: a generalist who triages email is cheap; a senior executive assistant who writes client-facing communication, protects a calendar across time zones, and keeps a CRM clean is worth more per hour — because they save you more hours per hour.

The lever most founders miss: hourly vs. outcome

The real cost of a hire isn’t just the rate — it’s how much of your week it frees. A US employee at ~$65k/year costs about $31/hour (fully loaded at ~2,080 hours), but you pay for all the hours even the ones you use, plus the overhead and risk.

With a part-time contractor you pay for productive hours only — no payroll tax, no benefits, no equipment, no termination liability. At 15–20 hours a week, a high-quality near-shore executive assistant usually costs a fraction of a US hire for comparable senior-level output.[4]

A simple way to decide

	US employee	Part-time virtual assistant
Full cost	~$65k/yr fully loaded	Pay-as-you-go or retainer
Time needed	Fixed 40h/wk (even if unused)	Only the hours you need
Payroll/benefits	Yes	No
Scale up/down	Slow, costly	Fast, flexible
Best for	Full-time in-house need	Flexible, senior-level support

If you genuinely need 40 hours a week of embedded, in-person operations, an employee might make sense. If you need consistent, high-quality support for a fraction of the hours — and want the flexibility to scale — a virtual assistant is usually the smarter number, and often the smarter team move too.

Sources

[4] https://assistantstaffing.com/blog/average-virtual-assistant-rate — Assistant Staffing - Average VA rates 2025