Just ran the numbers on remote hiring costs from a report the Austin chamber put out

Ngl I found out last week that paying for relocation bonuses for out-of-state talent actually costs less per hire than the lost productivity from posting a role locally and waiting 3 months to fill it, so can anyone point me to the data source for that chamber report so I can double check?

3 comments

3 Comments

kimmurphy29d ago

Yeah "lost productivity" adds up way faster than people realize. Try breaking the timeline into billable hours lost.

wade87129d ago

You ever had a friend explain their hiring nightmare in excruciating detail? Mine runs a small marketing agency in Austin. They needed a senior designer, figured remote was faster, ended up paying a $5,000 relocation bonus to pull someone from Ohio. But the local guy they almost hired? Took 18 weeks to start. Meanwhile the remote hire was billing within 3 weeks of the offer. My friend crunched the numbers later and said the lost productivity from waiting on local talent cost them about $8,000 in billable hours they had to delegate to overworked staff. The bonus was a steal compared to that headache.

kimmurphy29d ago

I found a similar breakdown from the Dallas Fed last year. They tracked 40 small companies. Relocation bonuses averaged $4,200 per remote hire. Local hires took 14 weeks to fill versus 5 weeks for out-of-state. The productivity loss from the wait was way bigger than the bonus cost. Check the Dallas Fed's working paper "Labor Mobility and Hiring Costs" from March. That might have the numbers you're looking for.