Spread (bill rate minus pay rate)

Definition

What the agency bills per hour minus what it pays the worker, before its own overhead.

Why It Matters

This, not headcount or revenue, is what the business actually earns, and it is squeezed from both ends at once by client price pressure and wage competition. On long assignments in two states a third squeeze is written into law. New Jersey pegs the pay of a temporary worker in a listed manual or service classification to the average pay and the average cost of benefits of the client's own comparable employees, a rule the Third Circuit left standing in 2024. Illinois reaches the same place through a different door, setting the rate by the client's lowest paid comparable employee once a worker passes seven hundred and twenty hours at that client inside twelve months. Neither is negotiable and neither shows up in an average, so normalize the spread by client and count how many assignments run long enough to reach a floor. Ask when bill rates last moved: an agency that has absorbed three years of wage inflation without repricing has a margin problem it has been financing quietly.