What Is a Normal Cost Per Hire? Benchmarks by Seniority, Sector, Role and Region

By Sparsh Goyal, Founder at The Cognitive. Published 2026-10-05 · Last updated 2026-10-05

• A normal US cost per hire is $5,475 for nonexecutive roles and $35,879 for executives, according to SHRM's 2025 Benchmarking Survey released 15 October 2025.
• The latest published UK medians, from CIPD's 2017 survey, are £2,000 for most employees and £6,000 for senior managers and directors, with public services lowest and private services highest.
• No public primary source splits cost per hire by US industry, company size or role family; Ashby's April 2026 data shows technical hires take 23.3 interview hours against 12.2 for business hires, which drives much of the gap.
• Compare your number with the same quarter last year and the matching seniority benchmark, and label what you counted; The Cognitive lowers the interviewer hours line by running first rounds as live AI interviews.

A normal cost per hire in the US is about $5,475 for a nonexecutive role and $35,879 for an executive, according to SHRM's 2025 Benchmarking Survey. In the UK, the last CIPD survey to publish medians put it at £2,000 for most employees and £6,000 for senior managers and directors. Your own number will differ by role, sector and what you count, and that gap is usually explainable. The Cognitive helps where the gap is interviewer hours.

This page is the benchmark reference: what the public surveys actually say, split by seniority, sector, role type, company size and region wherever someone has published the data, and how to read your figure against them. Where no public source covers a split, we say so instead of guessing.

Need the formula first? Cost per hire is total internal plus external recruiting costs for a period, divided by the hires who started in that period. We keep the worked example, the line item checklist and the spreadsheet layout on one page: how to calculate cost per hire. The short definition lives at what cost per hire is. Build your number there, then come back here to compare it.

What is the average cost per hire in 2026?

The most recent widely cited US average is SHRM's. Its 2025 Benchmarking Survey asked 2,371 members between 9 January and 3 March 2025 and, in a release dated 15 October 2025, reported an average cost per hire of $5,475 for nonexecutive roles and $35,879 for executive roles (read 5 October 2026). This 2025 release is the latest SHRM figure we found, so these are the numbers people usually mean when they search for the 2026 average.

For a sense of direction, SHRM's earlier benchmarking put the average at nearly $4,700, reported on 11 April 2022 (read 5 October 2026). That earlier figure was a single average, not split by executive and nonexecutive, so treat the comparison as a rough trend rather than a like for like change.

Two things to keep in mind before you use either number:

• It is an average of self reported figures. Each responding company counted its own costs its own way. Some priced interviewer time and some did not.
• It mixes every role and sector together. A company hiring call centre staff and a company hiring staff engineers both feed into the same $5,475.

So the average tells you whether your number is in a plausible range. It does not tell you whether your number is good.

Cost per hire benchmarks at a glance

Every figure below comes from a named, dated public source we opened on 5 October 2026. Blank splits are blank on purpose: we found no public cost per hire data for them.

The UK figures are old and the sector cells rest on 18 to 80 responses each, which CIPD itself flags. They are still the most recent published sector medians we could open, which is why they appear here with their date rather than being quietly updated with a guess.

Average cost per hire by seniority: executive vs nonexecutive

Seniority is the one split every major survey publishes, and it is the largest gap in the data. In SHRM's 2025 figures, an executive hire cost more than 6 times a nonexecutive hire ($35,879 against $5,475). In CIPD's 2017 UK medians, a senior manager or director cost 3 times another employee (£6,000 against £2,000).

The reasons are structural. Executive searches often use retained search firms, run longer and pull in senior interviewers whose time costs more. CIPD's report links the higher senior median to how hard skilled positions are to fill and to the more expensive recruitment methods often used for them.

What this means for your comparison:

• Never compare a blended number with the nonexecutive benchmark. One executive search in a quarter of 10 hires can lift the blended average by thousands of dollars on its own.
• Report executive hiring as its own line. Compare it with $35,879, and compare everything else with $5,475.
• Middle levels have no public benchmark. Neither SHRM's release nor CIPD's report splits entry, mid and senior individual contributor roles, so any table you see with those bands is not from either survey.

Average cost per hire by industry

There is no current, public, US cost per hire table by industry from a primary source that we could open. SHRM's member benchmarking may carry more segmentation, but its public 2025 release reports only the executive and nonexecutive averages. Several blogs publish industry tables; the one we checked credited vendor analyses rather than a primary survey, so we have left those numbers out.

The best published sector split we found is CIPD's 2017 UK survey, which reported medians from organisations whose estimates were accurate to within 20%. Its cost definition covered in house resourcing time, advertising costs and agency or search fees.

The pattern is more useful than the exact pounds. Private sector hiring cost more than public sector hiring at both levels, and CIPD suggests why: different attraction methods, and public bodies that tend to be larger and recruit at higher volume.

For US teams, the closest current proxy for why industries differ is what their people cost per hour, because interviewer and recruiter time is the biggest internal line in most calculations. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Employer Costs for Employee Compensation for June 2026, released 9 September 2026, puts total compensation for private industry at $46.89 per hour worked, ranging from $21.33 in leisure and hospitality to $84.28 in information (read 5 October 2026). That is not a cost per hire figure. It does explain why the same interview process costs far more per hire in a software company than in a hotel group.

Cost per hire by role type: technical vs business roles

No public survey we found reports cost per hire by job function. What has been published is how much interview time each function consumes, and interview time is the part of cost per hire that scales with role type.

Ashby's recruiter productivity report, published 28 April 2026 and built on over 109M applications and 247K jobs from January 2021 to March 2026, found that a technical hire averaged 23.3 hours of total interview time in Q1 2026, against 12.2 hours for a business hire (read 5 October 2026). By function:

Ashby also reported that business roles average 11.7 interviews per hire, up 36% from 2021, and technical roles 17.6, up 52%. Greenhouse's North America benchmark report from March 2026 lands in a similar place overall, at 12.3 average interview hours per hire in 2025 (read 5 October 2026).

To see what those hours mean in money, multiply them by an hourly rate. This is our arithmetic, not a benchmark: at the BLS June 2026 rate for management, professional and related occupations ($78.88 per hour), 24.7 hours of engineering interviews is about $1,948 of interviewer time per hire, and 8.9 hours for customer support is about $702. The gap of roughly $1,246 per hire comes from interview time alone, before any agency fee or job board spend.

So if your engineering cost per hire sits well above $5,475, that is expected. Compare engineering with engineering, quarter on quarter, rather than with an all roles average.

Cost per hire by company size

We found no public, primary cost per hire benchmark split by company size. The surveys above do not publish one in their open releases, and we would rather say that than print a band nobody measured.

What the data does show is how the work changes with scale. Greenhouse found that applications per hire rose 157.7% between 2022 and 2025 while recruiters per organisation fell 55.6%, and that monthly hires per recruiter rose 122.3% (March 2026 report, read 5 October 2026). Larger hiring volume spreads fixed costs, such as an ATS subscription or an employer brand campaign, across more hires, which tends to lower the per hire figure. Small companies making a handful of hires a year carry the same fixed costs over far fewer hires, and a single agency placement can dominate the year.

If you are a small team, the useful comparison is with your own previous periods, measured the same way, and with the seniority benchmarks above for the roles you actually filled.

Cost per hire by country: US vs UK and elsewhere

• United States: $5,475 nonexecutive and $35,879 executive (SHRM, released 15 October 2025).
• United Kingdom: £2,000 for other employees and £6,000 for senior managers and directors (CIPD, June 2017). We could not open a later CIPD survey that publishes cost medians, so these are the latest UK figures we can cite.
• Canada, Australia, India and the rest: we found no primary public cost per hire figure. If you hire there, build your own baseline for two quarters before you set targets.

Do not convert the UK figures to dollars and compare them with SHRM. The surveys are 8 years apart, used different samples and different cost definitions, and one reports averages while the other reports medians. A median is usually lower than an average for cost data, because a few very expensive searches pull the average up.

Why your number differs from the benchmark

Your cost per hire will rarely match a survey figure, and the gap is not automatically good or bad. Before deciding anything, check these 6 causes in order. Most gaps are explained by the first 3.

1. You counted different costs

Some teams report a cash view: external invoices and paid recruiting expenses only. Others report a fully loaded view: cash costs plus the allocated time of recruiters, hiring managers and interviewers. SHRM's survey asked companies for their own figures, so the benchmark mixes both. A fully loaded number will often sit above the average without anything being wrong. Label which view you are comparing, and do not switch between them from one quarter to the next.

2. Your hiring mix is different

A company hiring 200 customer support agents should not compare its cost per hire with a company making 8 executive hires. The first has volume and short interview loops; the second has retained search, long timelines and senior interviewers. Ashby's data shows interview hours per hire alone vary nearly 3 times between customer support and engineering.

3. Your period is unusual

One executive search, one large agency invoice or one hiring freeze can move a single quarter a long way. If hires fall faster than spend, cost per hire rises even when you spent less. Look at a rolling 4 quarters before reacting to one.

4. Your labour costs are different

Interviewer time is priced at your people's hourly cost. With BLS total compensation ranging from $21.33 to $84.28 per hour across industries in June 2026, the same interview loop can cost several times more per hire in one sector than another.

5. You use agencies more or less

Agency fees can be the largest external line in a quarter when they appear. A team that fills hard roles through agencies will sit above a team that sources in house, and that may be the right trade for scarce skills. Our guide to recruitment agency fees and commission covers the fee models.

6. You count hires differently

Offers accepted, start dates, internal moves and contractors all change the bottom of the fraction. Pick one definition and write it down; the calculation guide covers the choice in detail.

How to compare your cost per hire against a benchmark

A benchmark is only comparable when the cost scope, the hiring mix, the region and the period match. Use this ladder, from the most reliable comparison to the least:

1. The same quarter last year, with the same cost categories. This removes seasonality and definition drift.
2. The same role family inside your company, such as backend engineering against backend engineering.
3. Your own sourcing channels against each other, before any external benchmark.
4. The external benchmark for the matching seniority and region, such as SHRM's $5,475 for US nonexecutive hires.
5. A blended all roles average, only as a sanity check.

Suppose your overall cost per hire rose from $8,000 to $10,000. That could signal waste. It could also reflect a shift from 20 operations hires to 5 senior engineers. Break the number down by role and source before changing the process. The same caution applies to a falling number: if interview time was dropped from this quarter's figure, the apparent improvement is an accounting change.

Keep a short metric note beside the dashboard so the comparison stays honest. It should state:

• the cost categories included, and whether internal time is priced;
• which hires are counted, and whether the period follows invoice, offer or start date;
• which roles, levels and regions are in the figure;
• which benchmark you compare against, with its source and date.

That note is boring. It is also what stops a new finance partner from rebuilding the number differently 3 months later and comparing it with a benchmark measured another way.

Compare your interview hours, not just your invoices Run first round interviews as live AI video interviews and see what your cost per hire looks like without the screening hours. Start free

Cost per hire vs cost per interview vs quality of hire

These 3 metrics answer different questions, and a benchmark for one says nothing about the others.

Cost per interview is the lever inside cost per hire. Cost per hire is roughly cost per interview times interviews per hire, plus everything that is not an interview. If Ashby's figure of 17.6 interviews per technical hire describes your pipeline, a small change in what one interview costs moves the whole number. Our model of what one manual interview costs walks through the inputs, and the post on how many candidates are interviewed per hire covers the multiplier.

Quality of hire is the guardrail. A low cost per hire is a bad result if new hires leave early or miss expectations. Track it beside cost so you can see whether a cheaper process is producing the same people. See what quality of hire is and the wider set of recruitment KPIs.

Where The Cognitive fits in your cost per hire

The benchmarks above point at the same pressure: interviews per hire and interview hours per hire have risen since 2021, and those hours are the internal cost most likely to push you above the average. The Cognitive runs the first round as a live, two way AI video interview of 10 or 20 minutes, in 9 languages, and candidates book their own slot without creating an account. Your team reads a report with a 1 to 5 score per criterion, a weighted score out of 100, overall written feedback, the transcript and the recording, then spends interviewer hours only on the candidates worth a second conversation. Nothing is rejected automatically; people make the decision.

For roles you would otherwise send to an agency, AI sourcing searches ~900M public profiles from a plain English brief. AI Sourcing starts at $49/month and AI Interview at $99/month, on monthly plans you can cancel anytime.

The free trial includes 2 AI interviews plus 100 sourcing credits, so you can measure the hours on one role before changing your budget.

See where your hours go Start with 2 free AI interviews and 100 sourcing credits, then compare your next quarter with this one. Start free

The bottom line

A normal cost per hire is $5,475 for a US nonexecutive role and $35,879 for an executive, by SHRM's 2025 count. Use those figures to check that your number is plausible, then stop comparing with them. Split your figure by seniority and role family, state what you counted, and compare it with the same quarter last year. Where a public benchmark does not exist, and for most industries, company sizes and countries it does not, your own trend is the benchmark.

Sources

• SHRM, "SHRM Releases 2025 Benchmarking Reports", 15 October 2025: 2,371 members surveyed 9 January to 3 March 2025; nonexecutive cost per hire $5,475, executive $35,879. https://www.shrm.org/mena/about/press-room/shrm-releases-2025-benchmarking-reports--how-does-your-organizat (read 5 October 2026)
• SHRM, Katie Navarra, "The Real Costs of Recruitment", 11 April 2022: average cost per hire nearly $4,700. https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/talent-acquisition/real-costs-recruitment (read 5 October 2026)
• CIPD in partnership with Hays, "Resourcing and Talent Planning Survey 2017", issued June 2017, 1,068 respondents: Table 9 median cost per hire by sector and occupational group. https://www.cipd.org/globalassets/media/knowledge/knowledge-hub/reports/resourcing-talent-planning_2017_tcm18-23747.pdf (read 5 October 2026)
• Ashby, Ben Perry, "Recruiter Productivity, 2026 Talent Trends Report", 28 April 2026: interviews and interview hours per hire by department and role. https://www.ashbyhq.com/talent-trends-report/reports/2023-recruiter-productivity-trends-report (read 5 October 2026)
• Greenhouse, "The Hire Standard: Greenhouse benchmark report", North America, March 2026: 12.3 average interview hours per hire; applications per hire, recruiters per organisation and hires per recruiter changes 2022 to 2025. https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6668a687e71e2722fccb8357/69c6a67c710b821d52b0d5d3_Greenhouse_Benchmark_Report_March2026_NorthAmerica.pdf (read 5 October 2026)
• US Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026", released 9 September 2026, Table 4: private industry total compensation per hour by occupational and industry group. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.t04.htm (read 5 October 2026)

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