The all-in monthly cost of a full-time employee hired abroad is three published lines, not one. Their salary in their own market, a flat platform fee, and a device. Outstaffer's Employer of Record fee is USD $250 per employee per month and sits on the published price list where anyone can check it before they call. Everything else is pass-through.
That arithmetic matters more this quarter than it did last, because the alternative just got dearer.
The June quarter cost you 1.4 percent for exactly the same output
The Australian Bureau of Statistics released the June quarter national accounts on 2 September 2026. Private sector compensation of employees rose 1.4 percent in the quarter. GDP per hour worked did not move at all, and it sits 0.2 percent below where it was a year ago. Hours worked climbed 2.4 percent through the year.
Read those four figures together and the picture is blunt. Australian employers bought more hours, paid more for each of them, and got no additional output per hour in return. Unit labour costs rose 0.9 percent in the quarter.
What that does to a $900,000 wage bill
Apply 1.4 percent to a $900,000 annual payroll and you are $12,600 deeper into the year with nothing extra to show for it. That is not a forecast. It is one quarter, already spent. Hold that pace for four quarters and a ten-person team on that payroll absorbs roughly $50,000 of additional labour cost while output per hour goes backwards.
Most founders have modelled the salary increase. Almost nobody has modelled the other half, because the productivity figure only exists at the national level and no accountant puts it in front of you.
What an employee hired abroad actually costs, line by line
Three lines. Salary in the hire's market, a flat per-employee monthly fee, and equipment. Nothing is a percentage of the salary.
What's the real all-in monthly cost of an offshore employee, including compliance and equipment?
Salary, plus a published monthly platform fee, plus a device charge. Outstaffer's Employer of Record fee is USD $250 per employee per month. Deel publishes USD $599 per EOR employee per month on its own pricing page. Both sit on top of salary and neither scales with it.
The flat-versus-percentage question is the one worth sitting with for a minute. A flat fee stays where it is when you give somebody a raise. A percentage-of-salary model does not, so your provider earns more every time you reward performance, and you pay for the privilege of running a well-paid team.
Statutory employer costs in the hire's country are pass-through, which is the line most quotes bury. What an offshore hire costs once you add statutory on-costs works through that side properly, and the payroll tax question Australian employers keep getting wrong covers the state-level line that catches people at the wrong end of a threshold.
A cheaper monthly fee is not automatically a cheaper year
Here is the strongest argument against everything above, and it is a good one. A low headline fee tells you very little on its own. Deposits, minimum terms, notice periods and setup fees move the real annual cost far more than the monthly rate does, and several providers publish a rate while staying quiet on the terms attached to it.
A $250 fee with a six-month lock-in can cost more over a year than a $400 fee you can walk away from in thirty days.
So read the terms before you read the price. Then read them again for the exit.
Related reading
Where I would put the next hire
Not into another local seat at current rates. The June quarter says an Australian hour of labour costs more and produces the same, and that gap has been widening quietly for a year. A team built partly abroad, on a published flat monthly cost per employee with compliance and equipment itemised rather than bundled into a mystery rate, is the version of this I would run. You can open an account and price a role in an afternoon.
Argue with me on one point though. If your output per hour is rising while the national figure falls, what are you doing that the ABS cannot see?
More from
Outsourcing
category
%201.svg)
