What Does a Year of Warehouse Hiring Cost? BLS Turnover Data Turned Into a Budget

A warehouse hire is not a one time purchase. US transportation and warehousing employers separated from workers at an average monthly rate of 4.0% in 2025, which works out to roughly 48 separations for every 100 jobs over the year, according to BLS JOLTS annual separations rates. So the honest answer to "what does it cost to hire a warehouse worker?" is a yearly number: your cost per start multiplied by the number of starts that turnover forces you to buy. For most budget holders, the second number moves more than the first.

This piece uses public Bureau of Labor Statistics data to size that yearly number, shows how much it moves, and sets out which pricing models keep it predictable.

What does it actually cost to hire a warehouse worker over a year?

The yearly cost of warehouse hiring is the number of positions, times the annual replacement rate, times the cost per start. Most cost per hire benchmarks only describe the last term. The first two terms decide how many times you pay it.

In a sector where roughly half the workforce turns over each year, a $100 change in cost per start matters less than a few points of change in separations. A 500 position operation buys about 240 starts a year at the 2025 sector rate. That makes the replacement rate the biggest lever in the annual bill, and the hardest one to forecast.

How many warehouse hires does a year of turnover create?

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) reports hires and separations by industry. Warehousing is published as part of the transportation, warehousing, and utilities supersector, which also covers trucking, couriers and utilities. Treat it as the closest public proxy, not a warehouse specific figure.

Annual average monthly rates for that supersector, from BLS tables for hires, total separations and quits:

The last column multiplies the monthly average by 12. In levels, the supersector recorded 3,337,000 hires and 3,489,000 separations in 2025, according to the BLS annual hires levels and separations levels tables. Separations exceeded hires that year, so almost all hiring in the sector was replacement hiring.

For comparison, the total private sector averaged a 3.6% monthly separations rate in 2025, about 43 per 100 jobs a year. Transportation and warehousing runs above the private sector average, and the gap was widest in 2023, at 4.5% against 4.0%.

How much of that turnover can an employer influence?

In 2025, quits averaged 2.2% a month in transportation, warehousing, and utilities, against total separations of 4.0%. That means quits made up about 55% of separations in the sector. The rest were layoffs, discharges, retirements and other exits.

Quits are the share an employer can move with pay, scheduling, onboarding and supervision. Layoffs and discharges are largely the employer's own decisions. Neither is under the control of an advertising vendor, which matters when you read a vendor's promise about cost per hire.

There is also a floor. BLS projects about 904,200 openings each year for hand laborers and material movers, against 6,917,800 jobs in 2025, according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook. That is about 13 openings per 100 jobs a year from workers leaving the occupation or the labor force alone, before counting anyone who moves to another warehouse. The same page puts the 2025 median wage at $18.38 an hour.

How much does warehouse hiring volume move from month to month?

Even after seasonal adjustment, hiring volume in the sector swings. Hires in transportation, warehousing, and utilities were 310,000 in May 2026 and 247,000 in August 2026 (a preliminary figure), a drop of about 20% in three months, according to JOLTS Table 2. Quits fell from 199,000 to 138,000 over the same months, per JOLTS Table 4.

Those figures remove the normal seasonal pattern. The swings a site manager sees in raw headcount, including peak season, come on top of them. A hiring budget set once a year against a single cost per hire figure is exposed to both.

What does turnover do to a 500 position warehouse budget?

Here is a worked example. The cost per start is an assumed input for illustration, not a benchmark. Replace it with your own figure.

Inputs: 500 warehouse positions held flat for a year, and an assumed advertising and attraction cost of $500 per start.

Moving from a 2025 year to a 2022 year adds 30 starts and $15,000 without any change in price per start. That is a 12.5% budget overrun caused entirely by turnover.

Now add unit cost risk. If your cost per start rises 20% because applications convert to starts less often, the 2022 scenario costs $162,000 against the $120,000 baseline, 35% over plan. Volume risk and unit cost risk multiply, so a budget holder needs to know which one a vendor contract fixes and which one stays with the employer.

Which pricing model fits a hiring cost driven by turnover?

Each common pricing model fixes a different part of the equation.

Flat fee or annual subscription. The cost is fixed, but the number of starts it buys is not. In a high turnover year you run out of capacity. In a low turnover year you pay for capacity you did not use.

Cost per click. You pay for traffic. The price per start depends on how many clicks become applications and how many applications become starts. Both conversion risks stay with the employer, and both get worse when the labor market tightens.

Cost per lead or per application. You pay when someone starts or submits an application. The employer still carries the risk that applicants do not meet the requirements of the job.

Cost per qualified applicant. You pay only for applicants who pass the screening criteria you set. Spend scales with the volume you actually need, and the cost of applicants who do not meet your requirements moves to the vendor. The step from qualified applicant to start, which depends on your interview speed and offer, stays with you.

For a cost line that rises and falls with turnover, a per unit price tied to a defined outcome is the easiest to forecast. You can budget it as separations times price, and update it each month when JOLTS publishes.

How should a budget holder use these numbers?

1. Pull your own separations rate for the last 12 months and compare it with the JOLTS sector rate. If yours is higher, retention is the bigger saving.

2. Calculate replacement starts as positions times your annual separations rate. Budget against that, not against open requisitions on one date.

3. Run a second scenario at the sector's 2022 rate of about 54 per 100 jobs. That is your stress case.

4. Ask each vendor which term of the equation their price fixes: volume, unit cost, or neither.

5. Check how the contract defines the billable outcome and how long you have to dispute a count.

Where does Wonderkind fit in a turnover driven hiring budget?

Wonderkind runs recruitment advertising across channels such as Meta, TikTok and Google under a performance budget model where the employer chooses to pay per click, per lead or per qualified applicant. Under cost per qualified applicant, the pricing page says you "pay only for candidates who pass screening", so spend scales with the number of qualified applicants a turnover year actually requires rather than with traffic.

Wonderkind's terms and conditions define a qualified applicant by four conditions: the candidate completes the application flow, passes the knock out questions the employer configures, meets the job criteria the employer configures, and is delivered into the employer's ATS. Counts can be disputed within 10 business days of the dashboard report. The trade off is that the pricing page also says that if the market is more expensive than your target, "your budget simply runs slower", so in a tight labor market a fixed price per qualified applicant can mean fewer applicants per week rather than a higher bill.

FAQ

How many warehouse workers do employers replace each year?

In US transportation, warehousing, and utilities, separations averaged 4.0% of employment per month in 2025, roughly 48 per 100 jobs over the year, according to BLS JOLTS. JOLTS does not publish warehousing separately, so this is a supersector proxy.

What share of warehouse turnover is voluntary?

Quits averaged 2.2% a month in the supersector in 2025 against total separations of 4.0%, so about 55% of separations were quits, according to BLS tables for quits and separations.

What does a warehouse worker earn?

The median wage for hand laborers and material movers was $18.38 an hour, or $38,220 a year, in 2025, according to the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook.

Is cost per hire the right number to budget against?

Only in combination with volume. Annual warehouse hiring cost is positions times replacement rate times cost per start, and in this sector the replacement rate has ranged from about 47 to 54 per 100 jobs a year since 2021.