Hiring is set to cost more in 2027 wherever your business is based. In the UK, the National Living Wage goes up again in April, while Ireland’s national minimum wage rises to €14.94 per hour from 1 January and many US states raise their minimum wages on the same day, with California moving to $17.40 per hour.
Wages are only part of the picture, because every new hire also comes with employer taxes, pension or health benefits, paid leave and the cost of finding and training the right person. In this guide, we walk through how to plan your hiring budget for 2027 step by step, what employers pay in the UK, Ireland and the US, and how to make your budget cover the support your business needs.
List and Prioritise the Roles You Need
Before you put a number on anything, write down every role you would hire in 2027 if budget weren’t a concern. Look at the work that is already piling up, such as customer enquiries that take too long to answer, marketing that only happens when someone has a spare hour, or admin that keeps ending up on your desk, and then look at your goals for the year and the support it would take to reach them.
Once the list is down, rank each role by how much difference it would make to the business. A company that wants to grow its online presence might put a marketing assistant first, while one that is losing hours to inboxes and diaries might start with a virtual assistant. Writing down what each role will be responsible for at this stage also makes it easier to choose the right person later and to judge whether the hire is paying off.
Work Out the Full Cost of Each Role
Salary is only the starting point, and budgets that stop there tend to run short by the middle of the year. Every employee comes with a set of costs on top of their pay, and while the rates change from country to country, the cost lines themselves are much the same everywhere.
The first is employer tax, which is a percentage of each employee’s pay that goes to the government on top of their salary. The second is pension or benefits, which covers workplace pension contributions in the UK and Ireland and health insurance in the US. Then there is paid leave, where you continue paying someone for holidays and sick days, followed by recruitment costs such as job boards or agency fees, and onboarding, which is the time and training it takes before a new hire is fully up to speed. Equipment and software, such as a laptop and the tools the role relies on, complete the list.
Once you have all of these for a role, add them to the salary and you have the figure that belongs in your budget. Our guides to the cost of hiring a graphic designer and an executive assistant show how this works role by role.
What Employer Costs Look Like in the UK, Ireland and the US
The rates behind each cost line depend on where your business employs people, and the table below shows the main ones for the UK, which covers England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as Ireland and the US.
| Cost | UK | Ireland | US |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employer tax | National Insurance at 15% on earnings above £5,000 per year | PRSI at 11.40% of all pay for employees earning more than €552 per week, with a lower 9.15% rate below that and the threshold rising to €600 in January 2027 | 7.65% for Social Security and Medicare, plus federal and state unemployment tax |
| Pension or benefits | At least 3% of qualifying earnings under auto enrolment | 1.5% under the My Future Fund auto enrolment scheme | Health insurance, with an average single premium of $9,325 in 2025 |
| Paid holiday | 28 days for full time staff, including bank holidays | 20 days of annual leave plus 10 public holidays | No federal requirement, though most employers offer it |
| Sick pay | Statutory Sick Pay from the first day of sickness | 5 days of statutory sick pay per year | No federal requirement, though some states require it |
| Minimum wage | £12.71 per hour, rising in April 2027 | €14.94 per hour from January 2027 | $7.25 per hour federally, with most states setting a higher rate |
In the UK, employer National Insurance and pension contributions are set by HMRC and The Pensions Regulator, and staff are entitled to 28 days of paid holiday and Statutory Sick Pay. In Ireland, PRSI, the new auto enrolment pension, annual leave and sick pay are covered in this overview of Irish employment costs, and the minimum wage is published by Citizens Information. In the US, the IRS sets the rates for Social Security and Medicare and federal unemployment tax, the health insurance figures come from the KFF Employer Health Benefits Survey, and each state’s minimum wage is listed by the Department of Labor.
To see how this adds up in practice, take a role paid £28,000 per year in the UK, where employer National Insurance adds £3,450 and the minimum pension contribution adds roughly £650, bringing the cost to just over £32,100 before recruitment, onboarding and equipment. In Ireland, a role paid €35,000 per year carries roughly €3,990 in employer PRSI and €525 in pension contributions, which takes it to around €39,500. In the US, a role paid $50,000 per year carries $3,825 in Social Security and Medicare, and if you offer single health cover, the employer share of an average plan adds about $7,885, bringing the cost to more than $61,700 before unemployment taxes and any other benefits.
Plan for the Changes Coming in 2027
In the UK, the National Living Wage is currently £12.71 per hour, and the Low Pay Commission has projected a rate of between £13.02 and £13.34 from April 2027, with the final figure usually confirmed around the Autumn Budget. From 1 January 2027, the Employment Rights Act 2025 also cuts the qualifying period for unfair dismissal claims from two years to six months, which makes clear job descriptions, a proper onboarding plan and agreed goals from the first week more important than before. Our guide to your first four weeks with an administrative assistant shows what that early period should look like.
In Ireland, the minimum wage rises from €14.15 to €14.94 per hour on 1 January 2027, and the weekly threshold for the higher rate of employer PRSI goes up from €552 to €600 at the same time. The My Future Fund pension also moves into its second year, so any employees who were enrolled in 2026 will already be part of your monthly costs.
In the US, many states raise their minimum wages on 1 January, and health insurance premiums have risen year after year, so it’s sensible to plan for a higher benefits bill in 2027 than you had in 2026. If you employ people in more than one state, check each state’s rules, because minimum wage, unemployment tax and sick leave requirements can all differ.
Choose Between Full Time and Part Time
Not every role needs 40 hours per week from day one, and starting part time is one of the simplest ways to make a hiring budget go further. If the workload for a role is still growing, a part time hire covers what you need now and leaves room in the budget for a second role elsewhere in the business.
It also gives you a clearer picture before you commit to more, because after a few months you’ll know how much work the role involves and whether it justifies more hours. Our guide on how to set up a remote team on a budget covers more ways to stretch a smaller budget across the support you need.
Spread Your Hires Across the Year
Bringing every new person in during January puts a lot of pressure on cash flow at a time when many businesses are quieter, so it often makes more sense to phase your hires around when the work arrives. A business that gets busy in spring can plan to hire in late winter, while one that peaks before Christmas can bring someone in over the summer so they are settled by the time demand picks up.
Leave some room in the budget for things you can’t predict, such as a role that needs more hours than expected or a key person who leaves partway through the year. Reviewing the budget every quarter against what the business needs keeps it useful, because a plan written in October will rarely match exactly what happens by the following September.
How Arwana Can Help
If you want more support in 2027 with a cost you can plan around from the start, Arwana helps businesses hire dedicated remote staff from £699/month, €850/month or $970/month, with no recruitment fees and no long term contracts. That means you know exactly what each role will cost every month, whichever currency you budget in.
Our remote staff work the hours your business needs, full time or part time, and every hire starts with a Role Blueprint session so you and your new team member agree on priorities and KPIs from day one. We vet and test every candidate before you meet them and stay involved after they start through regular check ins, so you aren’t managing the early months on your own.
Conclusion
The steps for planning a hiring budget are the same wherever you are, even though the costs behind them change from country to country. Listing and prioritising your roles, counting the full cost of each one, allowing for the changes coming in 2027 and spreading your hires across the year all help you take on the people you need without stretching the business too far.
Book a call with Arwana to find out how remote staff can fit into your hiring budget for 2027.
