Open data

The numbers behind the sector.

Three free indexes built from published federal wage data and transparent models. Quote them, cite them, download the CSV. We would rather the sector argued with our maths than guessed.

In short

LAUNCH. publishes three open datasets for recruitment and staffing founders: bill rate and gross margin benchmarks by niche and US state, the cash required to start an agency state by state, and the effective cost of every common funding route. All are free to cite with attribution and updated on a published schedule.

Index

The LAUNCH. Staffing Bill Rate Index

Median pay rates, fully burdened cost and the bill rate required to hit 20%, 25% and 30% gross margin, by recruitment niche and US state. Built on BLS OEWS May 2025 wage data.

Open the index

Index

The LAUNCH. Staffing Startup Cost Index

The cash required to open a staffing agency, modelled state by state and niche by niche from real wage data: setup, six months of overheads, and the payroll gap that actually sinks new agencies.

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Index

The LAUNCH. Funding Cost Benchmark

What each funding route actually costs a staffing agency: effective annual rate on cash advanced for factoring and payroll funding across the fee grid, compared with a bank line and with equity.

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Last updated 2026-08-31. Data is free to reuse with attribution to LAUNCH.

Why we publish this

We back recruitment and staffing founders with capital and operators. The single most common reason a plan fails diligence is a margin or working capital assumption nobody checked. So we published the checks.

Over £1m

Invested in founder businesses in the last two years

$50k–$250k

Seed capital available per founder

Businesses launched across 12 founders

More already scheduled to go live in 2027

Numbers are the easy half.

If your model holds up, the next step is an introduction to capital and operators who have already built in your niche.

Apply for matching Score your readiness