The Temp Agency Trap
You need someone to answer phones, manage your calendar, and handle billing. You Google "temp agency Long Island" and call one of the big names. They send someone next week. Problem solved, right?
Not exactly.
What Temp Agencies on Long Island Actually Charge
The temp makes $17 to $22/hour. The agency bills you $28 to $38/hour. That markup covers their overhead, profit, and risk. For a full-time temp, you are paying $58,000 to $79,000 per year at the billed rate.
Want to keep the temp permanently? Pay a conversion fee of $3,000 to $8,000. Then you take on benefits, payroll taxes, and overhead on top of their salary.
The Problems Nobody Mentions
- High turnover: Temps leave. That is the nature of the arrangement. You train someone for two weeks and they take a permanent job elsewhere.
- Limited pool: In a tight Long Island job market, the best candidates go permanent fast. Agencies send who is available, not who is ideal.
- Office overhead: You still need a desk, a computer, a phone, and parking for them. That is $3,000 to $5,000/year you are spending on the workspace alone.
- Your management burden: The agency finds the person. Everything else (training, supervision, performance management) is on you.
The Virtual Assistant Alternative
A virtual assistant through Remote Staff NY costs $8.99/hour. No markup. No conversion fees. No desk needed.
Full-time annual cost: $18,699. Compare that to $58,000 to $79,000 through a temp agency.
Your VA is pre-vetted, dedicated to your business, trained on your tools, and backed by a replacement guarantee. If it does not work out, we replace them free. No starting over with the agency, no new conversion fee, no gap in coverage.
This Is Not Hypothetical
Businesses across Nassau and Suffolk County are making this switch. Insurance agencies in Mineola, medical practices in Smithtown, law firms in Hempstead, contractors in Babylon. They spent years cycling through temps and paying agency markups before someone showed them the math.
Now you have seen the math too.