KORE1 Contract Rate Index Methodology: Sources, Sample Sizes and How Bill Rates Are Modeled
Where every KORE1 rate number comes from: what we observed, what we modeled and what we left out.
Version 2026-Q4, effective October 16, 2026. Jump to the table.
Where do KORE1’s contract bill rates come from?
The KORE1 Contract Rate Index (version 2026-Q4, effective October 16, 2026) publishes employer bill rates by role, level and metro. Fifteen cells are observed from KORE1 W2 placements, and the rest are modeled from BLS wages plus a 24% burden.
Last updated: October 19, 2026
Contract rate methodology sounds dry until a bill rate lands on your desk. Then it’s the only thing that matters. This page shows how every number in the index gets built, so you can check it before you cite it or budget from it, whether you’re an analyst, a journalist or a buyer with a quote on the table.
The index covers bill rates by role, level and metro, plus what a 3-month or 6-month contract costs at 40 hours a week, and every figure carries a label saying whether it was observed on a KORE1 placement or modeled from federal wages. It doesn’t publish what contractors are paid. Never has.
- This page
- How the KORE1 Contract Rate Index is built, from sources to exclusions, for anyone who wants to check a number before they use it.
- Somewhere else
- The rates themselves are in tech contractor hourly rates for 2026 and IT contractor rates by city. Accountant rates are in contract accountant bill rates for 2026.
KORE1 has run a contract staffing desk since 2005, and the index is built from those placements plus federal wage data, though most of our placements are in Southern California, so the observed cells say so on their label. Nothing hidden.
What Does the KORE1 Contract Rate Index Measure?
One thing. What an employer pays per hour to bring on a W2 contractor through a staffing firm, and what that adds up to over a contract.
Bill rates by role, level and metro
A bill rate is the hourly price on the invoice. Each cell reports the 25th percentile, the median and the 75th percentile, so you see a range and not one figure that hides how wide the market runs for that role.
3-month and 6-month cost
Every cell also carries the cost of a full-time contract at 40 hours a week, 520 hours for three months and 1,040 for six. Both come from the unrounded median and round to the nearest hundred dollars. Plain arithmetic.
What it leaves out
Contractor pay. No cell in the index shows a pay column beside a bill rate.
A price list, nothing more.
How Are Observed and Modeled Cells Built?
The KORE1 Contract Rate Index publishes a KORE1-observed cell only when it has at least 5 W2 placements started 2023 to 2026. Modeled cells use BLS OEWS May 2025 wages plus a 24% employer burden, multiplied by the bill-to-cost range KORE1 observes on its own placements.
KORE1 observed
Our own placements
Bill rates from KORE1 W2 contract and contract-to-hire placements that started between 2023 and 2026. Five placements minimum. The label shows how many sit behind the cell, and says where the work happened, which is mostly Southern California.
- SourceKORE1 placement records
- Minimum5 placements per cell
- In 2026-Q415 cells, 180 placements
Modeled
Federal wages, our bill bands
Used wherever we don’t have five recent placements. We take the BLS wage for that occupation and metro, add the burden, and apply the bill-to-cost range we see on our own placements at that cost level, which is how a Level 2 cell lands on the median wage. The low and high ends of each range reach to the neighboring percentiles, to reflect skill differences inside a level.
- Junior, Level 1BLS 25th percentile
- Mid, Level 2BLS median
- Senior, Level 3BLS 75th percentile
- In 2026-Q41,350 cells, 23 markets
Which Contract Rate Cells Are KORE1 Observed?
All 15 observed cells in version 2026-Q4, lowest median first. Each bar runs from the 25th to the 75th percentile bill rate, with the brass tick at the median, so a long bar means a wide market and a short one means placements that billed close together. The cell label says primarily Southern California unless it says multi-state.
| Role and level | Placements | Bill range | Median | 3 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accountant / senior accountantAll levels · Southern California | 11 | $42-$85 | $44 | $23,100 |
| Help desk / IT supportLevel 1 only · Southern California | 12 | $41-$50 | $45 | $23,400 |
| Help desk / IT supportAll levels · Southern California | 39 | $41-$55 | $49 | $25,500 |
| Systems administratorAll levels · Southern California | 12 | $54-$70 | $57 | $29,600 |
| HR generalist / contract recruiterAll levels · Southern California | 17 | $52-$70 | $69 | $36,000 |
| AP / AR / billing specialistAll levels · Southern California | 6 | $42-$85 | $74 | $38,500 |
| Security analyst / engineerAll levels · Southern California | 7 | $70-$124 | $82 | $42,900 |
| Mechanical / electrical / manufacturing engineerAll levels · Multi-state | 9 | $74-$128 | $86 | $44,800 |
| ERP / NetSuite / Salesforce consultantAll levels · Multi-state | 15 | $73-$123 | $91 | $47,200 |
| Business systems analystAll levels · Southern California | 6 | $99-$103 | $99 | $51,500 |
| Software engineerAll levels · Southern California | 16 | $91-$120 | $105 | $54,600 |
| Data analyst / BI developerAll levels · Southern California | 11 | $69-$116 | $115 | $59,800 |
| Business analystAll levels · Southern California | 10 | $90-$120 | $116 | $60,400 |
| IT project / program managerAll levels · Southern California | 21 | $105-$124 | $116 | $60,400 |
| Software engineerSenior only · Southern California | 7 | $91-$138 | $120 | $62,400 |
Not a pay scale. Not a forecast. They’re what employers were billed on KORE1 placements that actually started.
Some readings line up with the model. Our help desk placements billed a median $49 across all levels, the same as the modeled national Level 2 cell.
Others don’t. Twenty-one KORE1 project manager placements billed a median $116, against a modeled $86 for a mid-level IT project manager in Orange County, and we’d rather show that gap than smooth it over. The observed cell mixes every level, and the modeled one is pinned to the median wage. Different questions.
Want these rates for your own req?
Ask for the 2026 Contract Rate Card, or send us a role, level, city and length and we’ll come back with a bill rate range.
Request the 2026 Contract Rate Card →What Is Inside a Bill Rate?
A bill rate is the hourly price of a W2 contractor through a staffing firm. It isn’t the contractor’s pay, and it isn’t all margin.
Devin Hornick, a partner at KORE1, walks clients through it with a round number. $100 an hour in pay plus a 24% burden is $124 loaded, and a contractor like that typically bills around $150 to $160. One illustration only.
Ask Devin about markup and his answer is short. A bill rate isn’t one. There’s a margin in it, and a stack of other costs most buyers never think about.
When one firm quotes pay plus a percentage and another quotes an all-in hourly rate, you’re comparing two different things, and the gap between them can be larger than it looks. Ask what each covers. Every cell in the index is all-in.
What a KORE1 bill rate covers
- Contractor wages
- Employer payroll taxes, including Social Security, Medicare, federal and state unemployment
- Workers’ compensation
- General and professional liability insurance
- State-mandated paid sick leave
- Dental and vision coverage paid by KORE1
- Weekly payroll
- Recruiting and account management
Burden is modeled at 24%, and our contractor burden rate page breaks it down line by line. Social Security runs 6.2% of the first $184,500 of 2026 wages and Medicare 1.45% (IRS Publication 15). California employers also owe at least 40 hours, or five days, of paid sick leave a year, and that cost sits inside every California cell in the index, from Los Angeles to San Diego to the Bay Area. Other ways to price the same seat are compared in staff augmentation pricing models.
180
KORE1 W2 contract placements, started 2023 to 2026, behind the observed cells
15
observed cells across 13 roles, each with at least 5 placements
24%
employer burden modeled in every modeled cell
23
markets with modeled cells, 22 metros plus the U.S. national market
KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4, effective 2026-10-16. Wages from BLS OEWS May 2025. Payroll tax rates from IRS Publication 15 (2026).
What Does the Index Exclude, and Why?
Anything that would pull a cell away from what an employer actually pays for an ordinary W2 contract. Our rule, as Devin Hornick frames it, is to filter anomalies and payroll-only deals out of the rate data rather than average them in, because one odd deal can drag a whole cell off the market. Clean data beats more data.
Payrolling
Payroll-only arrangements, where we run payroll for someone you already found, aren’t the same service.
Direct hire
A placement fee isn’t an hourly bill rate.
Offshore and corp-to-corp
Different structure, different risk, and neither is a W2 contract through a U.S. staffing firm.
Outliers
Placements whose bill-to-pay relationship falls outside the normal range, which usually means a data error or a special deal.
Roles out of scope
Anything outside IT, ERP, data, engineering and accounting and finance.
Observed cells withheld after the sanity check
Data engineer. Our placements (n=8) billed well below the modeled market and include analyst and ETL support titles. Withheld until they’re re-classified. Modeled cells are published.
Audit and SOX consultant. Most observations come from a single engagement. Withheld, and the modeled accountant cells apply.
How Do Index Roles Map to SOC Codes?
Each role maps to a Standard Occupational Classification code, so the BLS wage that feeds a modeled cell is for the right occupation. Orange County and Los Angeles both use the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metropolitan statistical area, so their modeled cells match. A mapping, not a ranking.
| Role in the index | SOC code | SOC occupation |
|---|---|---|
| Help desk / IT support technician | 15-1232 | Computer User Support Specialists |
| Network engineer | 15-1241 | Computer Network Architects |
| Systems administrator | 15-1244 | Network and Computer Systems Administrators |
| Security analyst / engineer | 15-1212 | Information Security Analysts |
| Data engineer / database developer | 15-1243 | Database Architects |
| Data scientist and data analyst | 15-2051 | Data Scientists |
| QA tester / test engineer | 15-1253 | Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers |
| ERP / NetSuite / Salesforce consultant and business systems analyst | 15-1211 | Computer Systems Analysts |
| Software engineer / developer | 15-1252 | Software Developers |
| Business analyst | 13-1111 | Management Analysts |
| Project manager / scrum master | 13-1082 | Project Management Specialists |
| Accountant and audit | 13-2011 | Accountants and Auditors |
| Financial analyst / FP&A | 13-2051 | Financial and Investment Analysts |
| Controller / accounting manager | 11-3031 | Financial Managers |
Data scientist and data analyst share one code because it’s the nearest SOC match for analysts. ERP, NetSuite and Salesforce consultants and business systems analysts share another. Wages come from the BLS OEWS metropolitan tables. Metro rate pages built on them include Orange County and Los Angeles.
How Often Is the Index Updated?
Quarterly. Every page that quotes the index states the version and links back here.
- Version 2026-Q4 · currentEffective October 16, 2026. KORE1 placements that started 2023 to 2026, and BLS OEWS May 2025 wages.
- Next update · January 2027New KORE1 placements and the latest BLS release are folded in, and every cell takes the new effective date.
Rates move between versions. A figure quoted from 2026-Q4 is a 2026-Q4 figure, and we’d ask you to say so.
How Do You Cite the KORE1 Contract Rate Index?
Copy this as is, then add the cell label if you quote a single cell.
Citation
KORE1. KORE1 Contract Rate Index, version 2026-Q4 (effective October 16, 2026). https://www.kore1.com/contract-rate-methodology/
Example with a cell
A Level 2 help desk contractor in Dallas-Fort Worth bills $43 to $54 an hour, median $48, about $25,000 for three months (KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4, modeled).
Version
Cite the version
Rates change each quarter, so name 2026-Q4 and the October 16, 2026 date.
Label
Say observed or modeled
A modeled cell is a market estimate, not a KORE1 billing history. Readers should know which.
Range
Quote the range
The median is the midpoint. The 25th to 75th percentile range shows how wide the market runs.
Link
Link this page
Point to the method so the number can be checked. We’d rather be checked.
Common Questions
Do staffing agencies include markup in hourly contractor rates?
The hourly rate an agency quotes normally includes its margin, but quotes aren’t all built the same way. An all-in bill rate carries pay, burden and margin together, while a markup quote may leave burden off. In Devin Hornick’s example, $100 an hour in pay loads to $124 and typically bills around $150 to $160.
How are staffing agency bill rates calculated, and where does the data come from?
KORE1 builds each rate from one of two sources, its own W2 placements or BLS wages plus a 24% burden and KORE1’s observed bill bands, and observed cells need at least five placements before they publish. No exceptions. The wage data is the BLS OEWS May 2025 release, matched to the occupation and metro.
What’s the difference between a bill rate and a pay rate?
A bill rate is what the employer pays the agency each hour. A pay rate is what the contractor earns. The gap covers payroll taxes, insurance, benefits and the agency’s work, so it isn’t all margin. Bill rates only.
What’s the average IT contractor hourly rate in 2026?
Nationally, a mid-level contract software engineer bills a median $108 an hour and a Level 2 help desk technician $49, per the KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4. The middle half of the market runs $96 to $122 for the engineer and $44 to $56 for help desk. Both are modeled national cells, and KORE1’s own help desk placements also billed a median $49.
How many KORE1 placements are behind the observed cells?
180 KORE1 W2 contract placements that started between 2023 and 2026 sit behind the observed cells, spread across 13 roles, and no cell publishes unless it has at least five placements of its own behind it. There are 15 cells because help desk and software engineer each carry a level cell as well.
Does the index include data engineer and audit rates?
Modeled cells for both are published. KORE1’s own observed data engineer and audit and SOX cells are withheld, because the data engineer placements billed well below the market model and most audit observations came from one engagement.
How often is the KORE1 Contract Rate Index updated?
Quarterly. Version 2026-Q4 took effect October 16, 2026, and the next update is due in January 2027, when new KORE1 placements and the latest BLS release are folded in and every cell carries the new effective date.
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Tell us the role, the level, the city and how long you need the person. We’ll send back a bill rate range, with what’s inside it spelled out.
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