Nobody sends an invoice for an empty seat, so it does not appear anywhere in the accounts. It is still the most expensive line in a hiring decision.
A role on a $450 day rate costs you about $2,250 a week while it sits empty. Over eight weeks that is $18,000 of work not getting done. That figure is deliberately conservative, and everything below explains why the real number is worse.
Day rate multiplied by five days gives the weekly figure. That figure multiplied by the weeks the seat has been empty gives the running total. No weighting, no multipliers, nothing hidden.
| Day rate | Per week | 4 weeks | 8 weeks | 12 weeks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $300 | $1,500 | $6,000 | $12,000 | $18,000 |
| $400 | $2,000 | $8,000 | $16,000 | $24,000 |
| $450 | $2,250 | $9,000 | $18,000 | $27,000 |
| $550 | $2,750 | $11,000 | $22,000 | $33,000 |
| $750 | $3,750 | $15,000 | $30,000 | $45,000 |
Day rate equivalents for 17 roles, converted from market salary bands, are published on the pay and rates guide. An electrician sits at roughly $450 a day, a trades supervisor at $550, an executive or general manager at $750. Sourced from SEEK market bands, checked 26 July 2026.
The day rate is the number employers actually have to hand, and it measures work not getting done rather than payroll that is not being spent. If all you have is an annual salary, divide it by 230 working days for a rough day rate.
It counts only the day rate. It deliberately excludes everything else, because a conservative number you can defend beats a dramatic one you cannot. The things it leaves out are real:
Search this topic and you will find confident multipliers: a vacancy costs two times salary, a bad hire costs thirty per cent of first-year earnings, and so on. Treat those with care. Most trace back to a single vendor study, and the assumptions behind them are rarely published.
One figure worth knowing, properly sourced: research commissioned by SEEK and conducted by advisory firm Nature, surveying more than 950 small businesses across Australia and New Zealand, put the cost of wrong hires to Australian small and medium businesses at $7.3 billion a year, with a single bad hire costing up to $16,000. Reported by SmartCompany, February 2026.
That is a different question from an unfilled seat, and it points the other way: rushing to fill a vacancy with the wrong person replaces one cost with a larger one.
Three things, in the order they make a difference:
The calculator does this arithmetic on your day rate and the number of weeks the seat has been open, and gives you a figure you can put in front of whoever signs off the hire. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
Open the unfilled role calculator. If you want the cost of the person once they start rather than the cost of the gap, that is what an employee really costs.
Day rate multiplied by five days gives the weekly cost, and that multiplied by the weeks open gives the running total. It counts only the day rate, so it is a conservative floor rather than a full picture.
The day rate is the number employers have to hand, and it measures work not getting done rather than payroll not being spent. If you only have an annual salary, divide it by 230 working days for a rough day rate.
No, and that is deliberate. Overtime to cover the gap, jobs turned down for lack of capacity, slower turnaround and the load on your existing team all sit on top of the figure.
Only if the work genuinely is not there. If the work exists and is being absorbed by overtime or turned away, the empty seat is costing more than the wage would, and it is costing it every week rather than once.
It varies too much by role, rate and location for a single honest number, which is why none is quoted here. What is reliable is that a rate below the market band is the most common reason a role stalls, and that is worth checking before anything else.
No. The arithmetic runs in your browser. Nothing is stored, nothing is sent, and there is no email wall.