Hire Your First Employee With the Monthly Numbers in Front of You
For owners about to make a first hire: your four options, then the Texas and US figures and the steps.
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Where owners get stuck before a first hire
If you're weighing a first hire, you may be here:
- You do the client work and the admin, so you're turning work away.
- Outside help has come and gone.
- You've got a monthly budget in mind, and you can't tell which kind of hire it buys.
How to hire your first employee, in short
To hire your first employee, start by deciding whether the person is an employee or a contractor, because the rules split there. For an employee, you get a free federal tax ID from the IRS, collect Form W-4 and Form I-9, and report the hire within 20 days. You also pay employer taxes on top of the wage: Social Security, Medicare and unemployment tax. In Texas, a new employer pays 2.70% unemployment tax in 2026 on the first $9,000 of each worker's pay. That comes to $243 a worker a year. Texas has no state income tax to withhold. Most private employers in Texas can choose whether to carry workers' comp.
Not legal or tax advice. This page explains the rules in plain words. Ask your accountant or lawyer before you act.
The Texas details are why this site exists. This site read 7 top-ranked pages for this question on October 1, 2026. None gives a single Texas fact.
In Jeremy Kenerson's experience, most first hires at small businesses and agencies are contractors. He's the founder of DeskTeam360. So the site shows both: an employee and a contractor.
Here are the steps for an employee, in brief:
- Decide which it is: an employee or a contractor.
- Get your federal tax ID, called an EIN.
- Register with the Texas Workforce Commission within ten days of owing Texas unemployment tax.
- Have the new employee fill out Form W-4 and Form I-9.
- Report the hire to the Texas Attorney General's office.
The first hire steps guide walks through all eight steps, with the office, form and deadline for each.
Four first-hire options by the month: Texas and US
Two things to know before you read the table:
- The employee figures are the middle (median) wage for a job plus employer taxes, before benefits. They use BLS May 2025 wages and 2026 tax rates. Two jobs are shown: an administrative assistant and a web developer. BLS's full name for the first job is Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive. Part time means 20 hours a week, which is this site's assumption.
- The contractor and overseas figures are what Jeremy Kenerson has paid contractors in his own hiring. Those are one owner's numbers. They aren't market rates.
Insourcing with DeskTeam360 isn't a hire, so its row shows one published price.
| Option | What it costs a month | Where the figure comes from | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| An employee, full or part time | Texas, part time (20 hours a week): administrative assistant $2,048.29, web developer $3,872.24. Texas, full time: administrative assistant $4,073.18, web developer $7,720.73. US, part time: administrative assistant $2,136.26, web developer $4,158.93. US, full time: administrative assistant $4,268.23, web developer $8,314.98. The US figures count no state unemployment tax | BLS May 2025 middle (median) wages plus 2026 employer taxes, before benefits | One person, for part of the week or full time |
| A contractor | Jeremy Kenerson has paid about $2,000 part time, and about $4,000 full time for a remote contractor in the US | What Jeremy Kenerson has paid contractors in his own hiring. One owner's numbers. They aren't market rates | One person, for part of the week or full time |
| Outsource overseas | Jeremy Kenerson has paid about $1,500 full time for a contractor overseas | What Jeremy Kenerson has paid a full-time contractor overseas. No sourced market figure was found | One person, full time, outside the US |
| Insourcing with DeskTeam360 | $1,497 for the Entrepreneur plan | DeskTeam360's published price as of October 2026 | A team with a North American account manager, working on 1 task at a time |
How to read it:
- Each employee figure is the middle wage for that one job. Half the people in the job earn less and half earn more, so your hire can cost less or more.
- The Texas figures count Texas unemployment tax. The US figures count no state unemployment tax, so the Texas and US figures aren't like for like.
- The contractor and overseas figures have no employer payroll taxes on top, so they aren't like for like with an employee figure. The IRS and Texas tests decide who counts as a contractor. The Texas Workforce Commission says a wrong call can mean more taxes, penalties and interest.
- Left out of every employee figure: benefits, paid time off, hiring costs, equipment, software, and workers' comp if you choose to carry it.
Result: The published price for insourcing with DeskTeam360 is lower than each employee figure in the table. It's also about $500 a month less than what Jeremy Kenerson paid a part-time contractor, and about $2,500 a month less than what he paid a full-time remote contractor in the US. It's about the same as what he paid an overseas contractor. What differs most is what you get for the money: one person, or a team.
The first hire cost page has the math line by line, two more jobs, and every source.
What insourcing with DeskTeam360 gives you
- A team in one office. DeskTeam360 calls its model Office-Based Insourcing: it brought its team in-house, into one office, and that team does the work. Two developers, two designers, two technical virtual assistants and a team leader sit together in that office. The office has new computers. It also has three internet providers and two sources of backup power.
- The same people each month. The people on your tasks don't change from month to month, so they learn your brand and your standards. Revisions are unlimited. Agencies can have the work delivered under their own brand.
- Work off your desk without a hire. The founder of Sidecar Marketing Solutions, a marketing agency started in 2012, used to bring in a mix of contractors for special jobs. A DeskTeam360 team now builds web pages for Sidecar's clients. The founder has more time for plans and growth, and is saving thousands of dollars a month with no need to hire single specialists.
If you're turning work away
This is for agencies that are turning work away. If your first hire would do production work, a call shows whether insourcing with DeskTeam360 fits.
One agency's story: Charisma Ink.
Gaynor owns Charisma Ink., an agency that does PR, digital marketing, influencer marketing, ghostwriting and book publishing for accounting and fintech firms. It was ten years old when she told this story. She wanted to grow, and until then she'd relied on a series of contractors. Now a DeskTeam360 team does her design work and the Amazon filing for her book publishing, and a project manager tracks the work. Almost a year in, she said she had the confidence to take work on. She put her savings at $20,000 a month or more, compared with hiring or contracting.
"I Don’t Have To Worry About If They Are Working On My Tasks Or Not Because I Know They Are."
Gaynor, Charisma Ink.
Questions owners ask before a first hire
How much does it cost to hire your first employee?
In Texas, a full-time employee at the middle (median) wage for all jobs costs $4,385.37 a month in wages plus employer taxes, before benefits. A part-time employee at 20 hours a week costs $2,205.03 a month on the same basis. Both use BLS May 2025 wages and 2026 tax rates. The table above has monthly figures for all four options. For scale on benefits, private employers in the US spent an average of $14.07 for each hour worked in June 2026, by BLS's count. That average includes payroll taxes the table already counts, so don't add the two together. The cost page shows what's in and what's out.
What's needed to hire your first employee?
To hire your first employee in Texas, you generally need three things: tax sign-ups and hiring paperwork, payroll, and the required workplace notices. The short list above covers the sign-ups and paperwork. Payroll has to handle what you withhold from each paycheck as well as the employer taxes above. Texas's required posters are free to download and print. If you go without workers' comp, you also file a notice of no coverage with the state after you hire your first employee. The steps guide covers each one.
How do you hire your first part-time employee?
You hire your first part-time employee with the same steps as a full-time one. Texas unemployment tax applies whether the employee is full time or part time. The tax starts when you pay $1,500 or more in wages in a calendar quarter, or when you've had one employee in 20 different weeks of a year. BLS counts a worker as part time if they usually work fewer than 35 hours a week, and it says that definition is for statistics only.
When should you hire your first employee?
When to hire your first employee is your call. No rule sets the date, and this site won't tell you to hire or to wait. A few plain things to weigh:
- How steady the work is from month to month.
- Whether the business can carry the monthly cost in the table above.
- Whether the work you'd hand off is the work that keeps you from taking on more.
What the site can show is what a hire costs and what it takes.
The four options, beyond the price
| An employee, full or part time | A contractor | Outsource overseas | Insourcing with DeskTeam360 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who manages the work | You do | You do. How much you direct the work is part of the IRS and Texas tests | You do | The team's North American account manager assigns the tasks and checks each piece of work before it's sent to you |
| What the work can be | The role you hire for, part of the week or full time | The role you bring the person in for, part of the week or full time | A role that can be done from outside the US | Production work, such as web design and development, video editing, email and funnel builds, and graphic design. A team can't answer your office phone |
| The paperwork | The employee steps above | Form W-9 comes first | The IRS says pay for work done outside the US, paid to a nonresident alien, is normally not subject to US tax withholding. Form W-8BEN is what a foreign person gives the payer, when asked, to show foreign status. Not tax advice. Ask your accountant | No hiring paperwork |
If your first hire would build websites or do development, design or video, you can choose insourcing with DeskTeam360. If the hire would answer phones or run the office, it isn't the fit.
Pick the option that fits
You've got the four options, the monthly figures and the Texas steps. If insourcing with DeskTeam360 looks like the fit for your production work, book a call.
DeskTeam360 doesn't use contracts. You pay month to month and can cancel whenever you like. Its guarantee, in its own words: "30-day money-back guarantee".
The contact page also has DeskTeam360's Ultimate Task Delegation Template, for owners who'd rather start without a call. It comes with a video walkthrough.
