# Spread (bill rate minus pay rate)

A term used when buying staffing agency.

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

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. 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 benefits cost of the client's own comparable employees. That floor applies from the first day of the assignment, and the Third Circuit left it 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 the New Jersey desks in listed classifications and the Illinois assignments long enough to reach the 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.

Part of: Buying a Staffing Agency (https://searchspheresource.com/guides/buying-a-staffing-agency)

Source: https://searchspheresource.com/guides/buying-a-staffing-agency/terms/spread-bill-rate-minus-pay-rate
Not dated: The same editorial definitions as the glossary, inside a trade.

Site index for machines: https://searchspheresource.com/llms.txt