Virtual Assistant Salary in 2026: What VAs Earn and What Hiring One Costs

What is the average virtual assistant salary in the US?

The closest government benchmark is $48,310 a year, or $23.23 an hour. That's the May 2025 median for secretaries and administrative assistants in the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook. BLS has no separate virtual assistant occupation. It counts VAs inside this one: "Some administrative assistants work out of their own homes as virtual assistants."

The spread around that median is wide. The lowest-paid 10 percent earned less than $35,360 a year, and the highest-paid 10 percent earned more than $77,720 (BLS). The BLS wage survey for May 2025 counts 3,284,600 jobs in the occupation, with a mean wage of $53,310. The mean sits above the median because the top earners pull it up.

For scale, the same survey puts the average US wage across all occupations at $69,770. Compare like with like: secretaries and administrative assistants averaged $53,310, which is $16,460 below it. Executive assistants averaged $79,140, which is $9,370 above it. If you're still working out what the role covers, start with what a virtual assistant does.

Virtual assistant salary by type: general, medical, legal and executive

The type of support moves the median by up to $30,660. BLS put the May 2025 median at $76,590 for executive assistants, $55,570 for legal, $47,540 for general and $45,930 for medical admin assistants. At the median, the executive tier earns $29,050 more than general admin support.

We read that gap as pay for judgment. BLS says executive assistants "provide high-level support for an office and for top executives of an organization." They "often handle complex responsibilities, such as reviewing incoming documents, conducting research, and preparing reports." And they "typically need several years of related work experience." A VA who books meetings is general admin; a VA who decides which meetings happen is executive tier.

The legal and medical lines matter if you're hiring for a law office or a medical practice. Legal admin assistants earned $8,030 more than general admin assistants at the median (BLS). Medical admin assistants earned $1,610 less, but they're the one type BLS expects to grow, by 5 percent to 2035. So a virtual medical assistant salary benchmark sits close to the general figure, while specialist legal support earns a premium.

How much do virtual assistants make per hour, per month and per year?

Paid at the BLS median, a full-time VA makes $23.23 an hour, about $4,026 a month and $48,310 a year. To convert a virtual assistant hourly rate, use the BLS method: annual pay is the hourly wage times a "year-round, full-time" figure of 2,080 hours (BLS). Monthly figures below are the yearly median divided by 12.

Part-time hours scale the same way. At the $23.23 median, a VA on 10 hours a week earns about $1,007 a month, 20 hours about $2,013, and 30 hours about $3,020. That's the hourly wage times weekly hours times 52, divided by 12. It's the wage alone; the sections below add what an employer pays on top of it.

One caution on the executive row. Those medians describe people doing executive-level work for top executives, usually after years in the job. We'd benchmark a new VA with a strong résumé but no record of running an executive's week against the general row, whatever the job title says.

Why do salary sites disagree on virtual assistant pay?

Usually because they aren't measuring the same people. The BLS wage figures in this post come from a government survey of employers, with a published method and a fixed date, May 2025. A salary site sets its own definition of a virtual assistant and its own data window. Before you trust any VA pay figure, ask five questions.

• ✓Employee or freelancer? The BLS survey counts wage and salary jobs. A US freelancer pays 15.3% self-employment tax, both halves of Social Security and Medicare (IRS), plus their own benefits. So a freelance rate isn't a wage.
• ✓Median or mean? We quote medians, because a few high earners pull a mean up.
• ✓Hourly or yearly? Multiply an hourly quote by 2,080, the BLS full-time year.
• ✓Which job? A listing titled virtual assistant can mean inbox help or a founder's right hand. Map it to the general median, $47,540, or the executive median, $76,590.
• ✓How old? The BLS wage survey describes May 2025 and came out in May 2026. Check the date on any figure before you budget from it.

Why a freelance VA quotes more than the wage

A freelancer prices from the employer's side of the table. On staff, the employer pays for the benefits, plus half of Social Security and Medicare. A freelance VA pays all of that themselves, so expect their hourly quote to sit above the staff wage for the same work.

For the VA, a freelance rate equal to the staff wage is a pay cut. We'd expect a fair quote to start from the wage for the tier, then add the employer's half of payroll tax, benefits and unbilled hours. Our guide on how to become a virtual assistant covers the skills that move a VA up a tier.

How much does a virtual assistant cost, by hiring route?

The salary is only the first line. The average private-sector admin employee cost $36.73 per hour worked in June 2026, against a $25.22 wage (BLS). A US contractor generally adds no payroll tax, per the IRS, but the classification risk is yours. Contractor plans at Deel and Remote run $29 to $49 a month. Their employer-of-record plans charge $599 to $699 a month per offshore hire.

The route also decides who carries the paperwork. On the employee route, you run payroll and file the taxes. Through an employer of record, the EOR does. On the contractor route, you skip payroll, but the classification call is yours, and the IRS holds you to it.

If the seat is a specialist rather than an assistant, our guide to hiring a GoHighLevel expert covers the costs and the vetting.

What a US employee costs on top of the salary

On the $48,310 median salary, budget about $15,100 a year on top for benefits and payroll taxes. In June 2026, private employers spent $36.73 per hour worked on office and administrative support staff: $25.22 in wages and $11.51 in benefits (BLS). BLS counts paid leave ($2.77) as a benefit, but a yearly salary already covers days off, so we count it as pay. The remaining $8.74 in benefits, against $27.99 in pay ($25.22 wages plus $2.77 leave), is about 31 cents per salary dollar. That's our math behind the $15,100.

Insurance is the biggest slice after wages, at $4.05 an hour (BLS). Paid leave adds $2.77 and legally required benefits add $2.58. That required line covers the employer's payroll taxes, such as Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance. Across all private-industry jobs, benefits were 30.0% of employer costs (BLS). Admin roles run slightly heavier: $11.51 of $36.73 is 31.3%.

Federal payroll tax at the median salary

Take a VA on the $48,310 median. You pay 6.2% Social Security on wages up to $184,500, and 1.45% Medicare, per IRS Publication 15. Together that's 7.65%, or $3,696 a year. Federal unemployment tax is 6.0% on the first $7,000 of wages, but a state credit of up to 5.4% generally brings it to $42 (IRS).

That's about $3,738 a year in federal payroll tax, before state unemployment tax, workers' comp or any benefit. The chart shows where the rest goes: insurance and paid leave each cost more per hour than the legally required line. On a part-time schedule, the percentage taxes shrink with the wage.

The same payroll tax math applies to any US hire. For the wage side of other roles, see our guides to digital marketing salaries and graphic designer salaries.

What does an offshore or contractor VA cost on top of their pay?

A US contractor costs the agreed rate, plus any platform fee, and generally no payroll tax on your side. An offshore employee through an employer of record costs their pay plus the EOR fee: $599 a month at Deel or $699 at Remote. Offshore pay itself varies by country.

US contractors: the paperwork and the risk

A 1099 contractor isn't your employee, so they don't get a W-2 from you. The IRS says that generally, "you do not have to withhold or pay any taxes on payments to independent contractors." For payments made after December 31, 2025, you file Form 1099-NEC for a contractor you pay $2,000 or more in a year, up from $600. The contractor pays 15.3% self-employment tax on their side.

The catch is classification. A VA who works set hours, in your tools, under your direction, can start to look like an employee. The IRS says that without a reasonable basis for the contractor label, you "may be held liable for employment taxes for that worker" (IRS). Ask your accountant before you set up an assistant as a contractor.

Offshore VAs: US tax and the employer of record

The IRS puts the rule this way: "The place, where the personal services are performed, generally determines the source of the personal service income." So pay for work a VA does abroad is generally foreign-source income, not US-source income. If the VA is a US citizen or resident, different rules can apply, so ask your accountant. The worker's own country still has employment rules, and that's the gap an employer of record fills.

An EOR employs the worker for you. Deel's pricing page says its EOR "handles contracts, payroll, benefits, and compliance" for $599 per employee per month. The page lists what that fee covers, and the worker's salary isn't on the list, so budget pay separately. A contractor plan costs far less, but on the basic plan the classification question stays with you.

The chart's middle bars are two more Deel plans. Deel says its $325 contractor of record plan lets you "shift liability to Deel" for classification. Its $125 US PEO (professional employer organization) plan co-employs staff across all 50 states. We couldn't trace any published offshore VA rate table to a government or marketplace source, so this post doesn't quote one.

Time zones carry a cost of their own. An offshore VA in Asia who covers your US working day works evenings or nights where they live. Our executive assistant candidates confirm in the application that they can work their client's US business day. An assistant who answers eight hours late can't guard your calendar.

How we hire virtual assistants at Webly

We employ every assistant we place, and the client pays one flat monthly fee, quoted per role on a Discovery Call. We don't publish our placement rates yet, so there's no Webly number in this post. What we can show is what we test for, because we think that's what the salary pays for.

Each executive assistant we place works full time for one US business. Our job posting puts it as "one long-term seat with one client, not five side gigs." The client's inbox, calendar and follow-ups become the assistant's job. As the employer of record, we handle payroll, taxes and compliance. Clients try the assistant free for three days before they commit.

Our application for a virtual executive assistant takes about 50 to 60 minutes and calls itself "deliberately demanding." Candidates record video answers in one take, without a script. They upload one real work artifact, such as a calendar screenshot or a tracker, and walk us through a system they kept in a short screen recording.

Two of the exercises test judgment head-on. One is an inbox at 8:02 AM client time with eight items waiting. The other is a vendor demanding a $4,200 payment while the client is on a six-hour flight. Calls like these are the judgment we think the $29,050 median gap between executive and general assistants pays for. The testing section of our virtual assistant guide walks through both, so you can run them on your own candidates.

One exercise asks for AI openly. Candidates draft an apology to an angry customer, improve it with any AI tool, and paste their prompts, the raw output and the final version. We want someone who uses AI daily and catches its mistakes. That's our answer to the BLS outlook above, which names AI as one reason the occupation is shrinking. Our small business AI statistics show how owners use AI themselves.

On pay, the application asks each candidate for their expected monthly salary and its currency; it publishes no pay rate. Our careers page says "We pay at the top of your local market" and posts the band before the first interview where one applies.