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Glossary · Running an agency

Fully-loaded cost

Fully-loaded cost is what an employee actually costs once payroll tax, insurance, recruiting, equipment and the ramp time of whoever trains them are counted — not their salary.

What we can add

Worked through for an agency junior: a $55,000 salary costs about $100,000 in the first year, and roughly a third of that year goes to work billable to nobody. The two places the back-of-envelope version goes wrong are omitting the owner's own ramp time and treating the first year as fully productive.

Go deeper

  • The full calculation →

Related vocabulary

  • Rewrite rate →
  • Escalation ladder →

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