There is exactly one published answer to the question how many offshore staff does a firm your size usually have, and it is 8.2 per cent of total headcount. On a 40-person business, that is three people. The number comes from American accounting firms, because no Australian industry body publishes anything comparable about its own members.
Inside Public Accounting reported on 12 October 2026 that 86 per cent of the IPA 100 now employ offshore full-time equivalents, up from 83 per cent a year earlier, and that those employees average 8.2 per cent of total headcount. Ninety-seven per cent said they will hold or expand that share this year. Outstaffer sells the mechanism behind that figure, an Employer of Record that puts the person on your team and the employment on ours.
The share is not the interesting part. The silence around it is.
Master Builders publishes the shortage and not the workaround
On 15 October Master Builders Australia said the industry is short 141,000 skilled construction workers, with a projected shortfall of 935,600 by 2035 and up to $242 billion of activity at risk. Acting chief executive Melissa Byrne said tradies are working hard, but there simply are not enough of them to go around. The release attributes them to modelling it does not name.
Every one of those numbers is about site trades, and site trades genuinely cannot move.
The other half of the payroll is a different conversation. Estimating, scheduling, contract administration, permit paperwork, accounts. None of that needs anyone on site, in the state, or in the country, and much of it is still done by people who could be elsewhere.
What 8.2 per cent looks like on a 40-person firm
Take the benchmark literally. A 40-person Australian business at 8.2 per cent would have three roles off its local payroll and on someone else's. If you have none, you are not being cautious. You are uncounted, and so is almost everyone you measure against.
What does three roles cost under Employer of Record?
Outstaffer publishes Employer of Record cover from $250 a month per employee. Three is $750 a month and $9,000 a year, before salary. What the $9,000 buys is that three roles stop competing in the same Australian labour market your site crews are already losing in. That is the only part of the 141,000 figure a single business can act on this quarter.
Against an agency fee on one local hire, $9,000 for three people is not a close contest. Read what offshore staffing costs once the on-costs are added before building a case on the headline rate.
Why no Australian firm publishes its offshore headcount
Industry associations exist to argue for policy, and the ask here is migration. A body that published how much of its members' back-office work already sits in Manila would weaken its own submission. So it publishes the gap and not the adaptation.
Individual firms stay quiet for a duller reason: they think it is a competitive secret, and that they are unusual.
They are not. That is the finding.
The honest objection: you cannot move a bricklayer
The strongest counter is that 8.2 per cent is an American accounting number and transfers to Australian construction badly. Accounting firms have a large, standardised, screen-based middle layer. A builder has a small one. The real figure for a trades business is almost certainly lower, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling something you should not buy.
Which roles in a building business can actually move?
The test is whether the work arrives and leaves as a file. The roles that offshore teams reliably cover have a defined input and a defined output. The rest need a ute.
Related reading
- How to tell whether building a team abroad suits your business
- How long it takes to fill a role this way
Stop asking how many offshore staff a firm your size usually has. Nobody has published it, and the American figure will mislead you. Count your own: open the payroll, mark every role whose work arrives as a file, divide by headcount. If the answer is zero, you know something your competitors are not saying aloud.
Then run one role through and see what the number does, or do not, which is also a decision.
What share of your payroll could leave the country tomorrow without a client noticing?
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