Independent resource. Not affiliated with SHRM, ANSI/ISO, any ATS provider, or recruiting agency. Figures are derived from publicly available 2026 benchmark data (SHRM, BLS OEWS, published industry reports) and are intended as ranges, not quotes. Validate against your organisation's own loaded rates before budgeting.
Vacancy cost

The cost of an open role: what vacancy costs per day.

Every day a role stays open costs real money. $300 to $500 per day is typical for a professional IC and more for senior roles. Here is the formula, the impact factors by role, and why this belongs in your cost-per-hire model.

Why vacancy cost matters.

When a role sits open, you lose the output that person would have produced. You also incur second-order costs: overtime for the team covering their work, customer impact on the projects they would have delivered, morale damage as colleagues shoulder extra load, and opportunity cost on the initiatives they would have led. Finance teams translate this into a daily dollar figure so it can be modelled, budgeted, and used to justify hiring speed investments.

For most senior and leadership roles, vacancy cost is larger than direct hiring cost. This page shows you the formula, the role-specific impact factors, and the worked examples that make the number real.

The daily cost formula.

Daily vacancy cost = Annual salary x Impact factor / 260 working days
260 = 52 weeks x 5 working days per week

The formula treats annual salary as a proxy for daily output. The impact factor adjusts for roles that produce more (or less) than their own salary in organisational value. A $100,000 software engineer at 2x impact produces $200,000 per year in value, or $769 per working day. A $100,000 administrator at 1x produces $385 per day.

Impact factor by role.

Role typeImpact factorRationale
Entry / administrative1.0xOutput roughly equals salary
Customer support1.0x to 1.5xHigher if revenue-impacting (churn reduction)
Individual contributor (technical, sales, product)2.0xProduces 2x salary in revenue or impact
Senior IC / principal engineer2.0x to 2.5xForce-multiplied impact on team deliverables
Manager2.5xOutput is the team's output, not the individual's
Director2.5x to 3.0xStrategic influence across multiple teams
VP / executive / leadership3.0xStrategic impact across the organisation

These are industry conventions, not hard science. If your finance team has published impact factors specific to your business, use those. For most planning purposes the table above is defensible and widely accepted.

Worked examples across roles and timelines.

RoleSalaryImpactDaily45 days open90 days open
Customer support$55,0001.0x$212$9,538$19,077
Mid software engineer$120,0002.0x$923$41,538$83,077
Senior software engineer$180,0002.0x$1,385$62,308$124,615
AE$90,000 base + $90,000 OTE2.0x$1,385$62,308$124,615
Engineering manager$200,0002.5x$1,923$86,538$173,077
Director$275,0002.5x$2,644$118,990$237,981
VP Sales$220,0003.0x$2,538$114,231$228,462
CFO$400,0003.0x$4,615$207,692$415,385

How vacancy cost changes your CPH math.

A typical mid-level software engineer role looks like this in the SHRM-style cost-per- hire model: $8,000 in direct recruiting spend. Fine. But if that role stays open 45 days, you have added $41,538 in vacancy cost on a $120,000 engineer at 2x impact. The total cost of that hire is $49,538, not $8,000. Report both.

Direct cost per hire only
$8,000

What SHRM measures. What your TA team reports. What the industry benchmarks against.

True cost of hire
$49,538

Direct spend + 45 days of vacancy at $923 per day. What finance and the hiring manager should see when evaluating hiring-speed investments.

Time to hire is the highest-leverage lever.

Every day you cut off time to fill saves the daily vacancy rate. For a senior engineering role at $1,385 per day, cutting 10 days saves $13,850. That pays for a meaningful investment in better scheduling, structured interviews, or pre-approved leveling. It also pays for the recruiter headcount many teams under-invest in.

The corollary: slow hiring processes have a compounding cost that dwarfs the savings from longer, more thorough loops. A 6-round interview process that takes 21 days longer to close than a 4-round process adds $29,000 of vacancy cost on the average senior role. The 4-round process almost always wins on total cost, even before accounting for candidate drop-off from a long loop.

Rule of thumb: cut 10 days off time to fill, save 10 x daily vacancy cost. For a senior IC that is $14,000. For a VP that is $25,000+.
Run your own numbers.

Run your role through the calculator to see vacancy cost as a percentage of total loop cost.

Run the calculator

Frequently asked questions

How much does an open position cost per day?
The standard vacancy cost formula is annual salary multiplied by an impact factor divided by 260 working days. A $100,000 individual contributor at 2x impact produces $769 per day of vacancy cost. A $150,000 software engineer at 2x is $1,154 per day. A $220,000 VP of sales at 3x is $2,538 per day. The figure is a productivity-loss estimate, not a direct spend, but it is how finance teams justify hiring speed investments.
What is the vacancy impact multiplier?
The impact multiplier translates salary into the organisational value the role produces. 1x for entry-level and administrative roles where output roughly equals salary. 2x for individual contributors in revenue or impact roles (engineering, sales, product, marketing). 2.5x for managers where the value is force-multiplied across a team. 3x for senior leadership where strategic impact compounds. Use your own finance team's impact numbers if they publish them.
Should vacancy cost be in cost per hire?
The SHRM and ANSI standard excludes it because cost per hire is meant to measure direct recruiting spend. For internal finance conversations, a total-cost model including vacancy is more honest because it captures the full business impact. A $4,800 CPH on a role that stayed open 60 days extra at $1,000 per day adds $60,000 of vacancy cost, making the effective CPH $64,800. Track both numbers separately and understand which one each stakeholder cares about.
Why is vacancy cost so high for senior roles?
Three compounding factors: senior salaries are higher (the base input), impact multipliers are higher (2.5x to 3x vs 2x), and senior roles take longer to fill (60 to 120 days vs 30 to 45 days). A $220,000 VP at 3x impact over 90 days produces $228,500 in vacancy cost. That is often 5 to 10x the direct hiring spend on that role, which is why executive search firms justify their 30 percent retained fees by getting you to shortlist faster.
How do I reduce vacancy cost?
Cut time to fill. Every day you shave off the search saves the daily vacancy rate. Strategies include: structured interviews (shorter, better signal), pre-approved salary bands (no approval delays), async initial screens (reduce scheduling friction), rolling offers (make offers as candidates clear debrief rather than holding for finalists), and candidate pipelining (keep warm leads for recurring roles). Speed is the single highest-leverage variable in total hire cost.

Related reading

Time to hire benchmarks

2026 median days by role and industry. The other side of the same equation.

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Reduce hiring costs

Strategies that cut time to fill and vacancy cost together.

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Run the calculator

See vacancy cost as a percentage of total loop cost for your role.

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