Most founders budget the salary and call it done. That number is wrong by nearly double. Here is the full cost breakdown of hiring an executive assistant in 2025, and what the alternative actually looks like.
Ask a founder what it costs to hire a good executive assistant, and they will say something like "$65,000 a year." That number is not wrong exactly. It is just incomplete in a way that will cost you $80,000 more than you planned for.
The salary is only the beginning. When you account for benefits, payroll taxes, recruiting costs, onboarding time, equipment, turnover, and the productivity ceiling that comes with a human schedule, the true cost of hiring an executive assistant climbs above $150,000 per year. Often higher.
This is not a knock on executive assistants as people. Many of them are excellent. This is about the numbers. And the numbers, once you see them laid out clearly, tell a different story than the job posting suggests.
Let us go through every line item.
Understanding how much does an executive assistant cost per year requires looking beyond the W-2. Here is what you are actually paying when you bring on a full-time EA in 2025.
Base salary: $60,000 to $85,000
This is the figure everyone quotes. A competent, experienced EA in a major market commands $65,000 to $80,000. In New York, San Francisco, or Miami, the floor is closer to $75,000. Budget $72,500 as a working estimate.
Benefits: 25% to 30% on top of salary
Health insurance, dental, vision, 401(k) matching, and life insurance. The IRS estimates employer-provided benefits average 30.9% of total compensation in the U.S. For a $72,500 salary, that is roughly $22,400 in additional annual cost. It does not include the administrative overhead of managing those benefits.
Payroll taxes: 7.65% of salary
FICA alone (Social Security and Medicare) adds another $5,546 per year. Add state unemployment insurance, and you are looking at $6,500 to $7,500 depending on location.
Recruiting: $8,000 to $15,000 per hire
A quality EA hire does not happen through a free job board. You are paying a recruiter (typically 15% to 20% of first-year salary), running paid job listings, conducting multiple interview rounds, and spending 40 to 60 hours of your own time across the process. At your effective hourly rate, that time alone represents $5,000 to $20,000 in opportunity cost.
Onboarding: 3 months before they are actually useful
Research from SHRM puts average onboarding time for an administrative hire at 90 days to reach full productivity. During that window, you are paying a full salary for partial output. You are also spending significant time on training, process documentation, tool access, and mistake correction. Call it $18,000 in pay during the ramp period, with maybe 40% productivity. That is $10,800 in cost for suboptimal contribution.
Equipment and software: $2,000 to $4,000 per year
Laptop, peripherals, desk setup (if in-office), software licenses, and communication tools. Even remote-only roles require this investment.
Salary ($72,500) + Benefits ($22,400) + Payroll Tax ($7,000) + Recruiting ($12,000) + Onboarding friction ($10,800) + Equipment ($3,000) = $127,700 in Year 1. Add management overhead and the number crosses $140,000 easily. And that is before the first turnover.
Here is the part that does not show up in any accounting software but matters enormously to how you operate: coverage constraints.
9 to 5, Monday through Friday. Your EA is available for roughly 2,000 hours per year. That sounds like a lot until you realize the business opportunity does not run on their schedule. A deal closes at 11pm. A server goes down on Saturday. A flight needs rebooking at 6am because yours got cancelled. You handle it yourself.
Sick days, PTO, and personal days. The average U.S. worker takes 7.7 sick days per year and receives 15 PTO days. That is 22 to 23 days per year, or over four weeks, where you have no coverage. For a business that moves fast, this creates real gaps.
Single-threaded capacity. Your EA is one person. They can work on one thing at a time. When you have three priorities running in parallel, something waits.
Turnover every 18 months on average. This is the number that quietly breaks founders. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics places average tenure in administrative support roles at approximately 2.1 years, with turnover in practice often happening at the 12 to 18 month mark. When your EA leaves, you restart the recruiting process. Another $12,000 in fees. Another 90-day ramp. Another three months of degraded output. And you lose institutional knowledge that was never properly documented.
The true cost of hiring an executive assistant is not just what you pay. It is what you lose every time the position turns over.
An AI replacement for an executive assistant does not mean a simple chat interface that can answer calendar questions. The category has moved well past that. What exists today is a fully managed AI operations service that runs 24/7, handles multi-domain tasks simultaneously, and does not accrue PTO.
Here is what a 24/7 AI assistant for business handles across a real operating week:
All of this via Telegram. No new software to learn. No onboarding of the tool. And no 9 to 5 limitation.
| Factor | Full-Time EA (2025) | Jarvis AI (2025) |
|---|---|---|
| Annual cost | $127,000–$160,000 all-in | $500–$8,000/mo |
| Availability | 9–5, Mon–Fri | 24/7, 365 days |
| Ramp time | 90 days to full productivity | Under 1 hour setup |
| Sick days / PTO | 22–25 days/year of no coverage | None. Zero downtime. |
| Recruiting cost | $8,000–$15,000 per hire | $0 |
| Turnover risk | Every 12–18 months average | No turnover |
| Skills covered | Administrative tasks only | Email, dev, marketing, travel, PM |
| Parallel tasks | One at a time | Multiple simultaneously |
| HR overhead | Performance reviews, benefits admin, legal exposure | None |
| Scale down / cancel | Legal process, severance risk | Cancel anytime |
| Year 1 break-even | — | Immediate |
This is not an argument that human executive assistants are bad at their jobs. The best ones are exceptional. The argument is that the economics of hiring one in 2025 are genuinely difficult to justify for most founders once you account for every real cost.
If you are spending $127,000 to $160,000 per year for 2,000 hours of coverage, capped at one person's skill set, with a near-certain turnover event inside 18 months, you are making a bet that the structure of work from 2015 still makes sense in 2025. It does not.
The math is not subtle. A fully managed AI operations service handles more domains, runs more hours, costs a fraction of the all-in price, and the onboarding is measured in minutes, not months.
If you have been considering hiring an EA, it is worth understanding the actual alternative before you post the job listing.