How BLS wage data sets retainer floors for US assistant agencies

What to take away

• Remote assistant retainers should be floored against Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational wage figures, not against competitor pricing.
• Metro wage spreads are wide: the same administrative assistant role pays materially more in San Jose or New York than in McAllen or El Paso.
• Add agency margin, overhead and a benefits load of roughly 1.25 to 1.4 times base wage before you publish a tier.
• BLS updates its wage series on a fixed release schedule, so a floor set once will drift if you never re-run it.
• A published tier should state the metro basis, the margin, and the review date so clients see the logic.

Why a retainer floor needs an external anchor

Most agency owners set a floor by looking at what competitors charge. That is a weak anchor. A competitor may be underpaying assistants, absorbing losses, or serving a metro with completely different labor costs.

An external anchor fixes the floor to something you do not control. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes occupational wage figures for administrative assistants by metro area. Those numbers are public, defensible, and updated on a known schedule.

When a client pushes back on price, you are not defending a preference. You are pointing at federal wage data and a stated margin policy. That changes the conversation.

A floor is not a price. It is the number below which a retainer cannot cover the assistant, the agency's overhead, and a defensible profit. Everything above the floor is positioning.

If you have never built one, the mechanics are close to the approach in our guide to price without guessing. The difference here is that the anchor is BLS data rather than a survey of rivals.

Reading BLS occupational wage series for administrative assistants

The BLS publishes occupation statistics across many programs, and administrative assistants sit inside the office and administrative support group. The Overview of BLS Statistics by Occupation is the entry point for finding the right series.

You want the annual wage estimates, not the hourly headline alone. Annual figures already reflect full-time schedules and are easier to convert into a retainer.

Look at three values for each occupation code: the 10th percentile, the median, and the 90th percentile. The 10th percentile tells you what a thin market pays. The median is your default floor input. The 90th percentile shows what a senior, specialized assistant commands.

The series also reports employment counts. A metro with few administrative assistants and high demand will push your recruiting cost up even if the median looks modest.

For remote roles, the assistant's location matters more than the client's. If you hire in a low-wage metro and serve a high-wage client, your floor is set by the assistant's market, not the client's.

That is the single most useful thing BLS data does for a remote agency: it separates where the work happens from where the invoice is sent. Our breakdown of wages, overheads and benchmarks walks through the same split in more detail.

Which series to pull

• Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for the metro area.
• The specific administrative assistant occupation code, not the broad office support group.
• Annual mean and annual median, plus the 10th and 90th percentiles.
• Employment count for the metro, as a recruiting-difficulty signal.

Pull the numbers into a spreadsheet with one row per metro. Keep the source year in a column so you know when the floor was last refreshed.

Metro wage spreads in California, Texas and New York

Wage spreads between metros are large enough to change your pricing tiers, not just your margins. The BLS organizes its data geographically, and the Overview of BLS Statistics by Geography explains how metro and county breakdowns are published.

California splits into two very different labor markets. San Francisco and San Jose carry the highest administrative assistant wages in the country. Los Angeles and San Diego sit below them but still well above the national median. Fresno and Bakersfield are materially cheaper.

Texas runs the other way. Austin and Dallas have tightened as tech and finance hiring grew. Houston tracks energy cycles. McAllen and El Paso remain among the lowest-wage metros in the country.

New York is the sharpest split of all. The New York metro area pays near the top of the national range. Upstate metros like Buffalo, Rochester and Albany pay a fraction of that for the same occupation code.

Florida, Illinois, Washington, Colorado and Georgia show similar internal spreads. Miami and Chicago pay far more than smaller metros in their own states.

The practical consequence: a single national retainer floor will either overprice you in McAllen or underprice you in San Jose. You need at least three floors, not one.

Illustrative metro tiers

The figures below are illustrative shapes, not quoted BLS values. Pull the live numbers for your own hiring metros before you set anything.

Metro tier	Example metros	Relative wage level	Floor implication
Tier 1	San Jose, San Francisco, New York	Highest	Highest floor, senior-only staffing
Tier 2	Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Boston	Above national median	Standard floor, experienced assistants
Tier 3	Austin, Dallas, Denver, Atlanta, Miami	Near national median	Mid floor, mixed experience
Tier 4	McAllen, El Paso, Fresno, Buffalo	Below national median	Lowest floor, watch retention

For county-level context on where your assistants actually live and work, the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages gives employment and wage data at a finer grain than the metro series.

Adding agency margin, overhead and benefits load

The BLS wage is what the assistant earns. It is not what the assistant costs you. Three additions sit between the two.

First, the benefits and employment load. If you employ assistants, payroll taxes, workers' compensation, paid time off and any benefits add a percentage on top of base wage. A common planning range is 1.25 to 1.4 times base.

If you engage assistants as contractors, the load looks different but does not disappear. You still carry recruiting, onboarding, software seats and bench time. The IRS rules on self-employment tax and 1099-NEC reporting shape how you structure this, and the US Department of Labor rules on independent contractor classification and overtime determine whether the contractor route is even available to you.

Second, overhead. Software, insurance, accounting, sales tools, management time and non-billable hours all sit here. The BLS publishes business cost statistics that help you sanity-check these assumptions rather than inventing them; the Overview of BLS Statistics on Business Costs is the starting point.

Third, margin. Margin is what remains after the assistant cost and overhead are covered. A healthy virtual assistant agency profit margin depends on your service mix, but you should decide the target before you price, not after.

The floor formula

1. Take the annual median wage for the occupation code in the assistant's metro.
2. Multiply by the benefits and employment load factor.
3. Add annual overhead per billable assistant.
4. Divide by billable hours per year to get a cost per hour.
5. Divide by one minus your target margin to get the floor rate.

Step five is the one owners skip. If your cost per hour is $30 and you want a 30 percent margin, the floor is not $39. It is $30 divided by 0.7, which is about $43.

That distinction is the difference between a margin and a markup. Markup on cost and margin on revenue are not the same number, and mixing them quietly erodes profit.

Worked retainer floor example

An agency hires an administrative assistant in the Dallas metro. The annual median wage for the occupation code is $45,000. The agency applies a 1.3 benefits and employment load, giving $58,500.

Annual overhead per billable assistant is $12,000 for software, insurance, management time and non-billable hours. Total annual cost is $70,500.

The agency bills 1,400 hours per year per assistant after accounting for leave, training and admin time. Cost per hour is about $50.

The agency targets a 30 percent margin. Floor rate is $50 divided by 0.7, about $72 per hour. A 40-hour monthly retainer floors at roughly $12,400.

Run the same math in San Jose with a higher median wage and the floor moves well past $100 per hour. Run it in McAllen and it drops sharply. Same service, different floor.

Turning wage data into a published retainer tier

A floor is internal. A published tier is a product. The gap between them is positioning, scope and what you promise the client.

Start by grouping your hiring metros into the tiers from the table above. Assign each tier a floor rate. Then build packages on top.

Most agencies publish three or four tiers. A common shape is a part-time tier, a full-time tier, and a senior or specialized tier. Each tier should name the hours, the response time, and the scope.

State the metro basis in your own internal documentation, and state the review date on any quote. Clients rarely ask for the BLS series, but the fact that you have one makes the number feel less arbitrary.

Watch the services you bundle. Some services carry far better margins than others, and mixing them into one flat tier hides that. Our breakdown of the money-making services in an agency covers where the margin actually sits.

If you are rebuilding a full price list, the structure in our profit model shows how tiers, floors and margins fit together across a catalog.

Checklist before publishing a tier

• Floor is calculated from a BLS wage figure for the assistant's metro, not a competitor's price.
• Benefits and employment load factor is documented.
• Overhead per billable assistant is estimated and reviewed annually.
• Target margin is stated as margin on revenue, not markup on cost.
• Billable hours assumption accounts for leave, training and admin time.
• Tier states hours, response time and scope in writing.
• Review date is set and tied to the BLS release calendar.

When to re-run the numbers after a BLS release

The BLS publishes its major wage and employment releases on a fixed annual calendar. The Schedule of Selected Releases shows the dates, so you can plan a pricing review instead of reacting to it.

The occupational wage estimates typically refresh once a year. Employment and wage data from the Quarterly Census refresh quarterly. That means your floor inputs move on two clocks.

A practical rule: review floors once a year after the annual wage release, and check the quarterly data only if you are hiring in a metro that is moving fast.

Do not reprice clients every time the data moves. Absorb small changes inside your margin and reprice at renewal. Clients accept a scheduled annual review far better than a mid-term increase.

If a metro wage rises sharply and your floor is now underwater, that is not a pricing problem. It is a staffing problem, and you should fix it before the next renewal cycle.

Signals that you need an off-cycle review

• Your assistant turnover in one metro spikes.
• Recruiting for a tier takes far longer than it used to.
• A large share of new hires are landing above your assumed median.
• Your realized margin on a tier falls below target for two consecutive quarters.

Any of these means the floor is stale. Re-pull the metro wage, re-run the formula, and decide whether to raise the tier or change the staffing model for that market.

Common questions

What if BLS data does not cover my assistant's exact role? Use the closest administrative assistant occupation code and adjust with a documented factor. Note the substitution in your pricing file so the assumption stays visible.

Should the floor be based on the assistant's metro or the client's? The assistant's. Remote work moves the cost, and the cost is what the floor has to cover. The client's location affects what you can charge, not what you must pay.

How often should I update retainer floors? Once a year after the annual occupational wage release is enough for most agencies. Review quarterly employment data only in metros where hiring is tight.

Is a percentage markup the same as a margin? No. A markup is applied to cost. A margin is the share of revenue left after cost. Dividing cost by one minus the target margin gives the floor rate.

Do contractor assistants change the floor math? Yes. The load shifts from payroll taxes and benefits toward recruiting, bench time and software, but it does not vanish. Classification rules still apply.

Can I publish one national floor instead of metro tiers? You can, but it will overprice you in low-wage metros and underprice you in high-wage ones. Three or four tiers is usually the practical minimum.