The going rate for every role we can price, in USD per month. These are local posted wages, so a quote well above the band is a markup you can ask about.
Converted at 1 USD = ₨277.66, open exchange-rate data as of 9/2026.
The first index pull has not landed yet. The methodology below governs what will appear here.
Customer support is the deepest cell in this dataset after sales: forty-five postings, an average posted band of $172 to $217 a month (PKR 47,700 to 60,256), pulled 8/2026. Virtual assistant runs $157 to $238 (PKR 43,750 to 66,250) across eight postings. Those are wages Pakistani employers published, not what a BPO vendor charges a US buyer, and the distance between the two is the subject of this page.
The table above holds the current pull, grouped by role family, with sample sizes printed. Anything under three observations publishes "insufficient data" rather than a number.
| Role family | They earn (USD/month) | Your cost to employ | Typical agency quote | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer support | $172-$217 | $192-$256 | $346-$665 | role page |
| Virtual assistant | $157-$238 | $176-$281 | $317-$731 | role page |
| Admin officer | $242-$271 | $271-$320 | $488-$831 | role page |
| Ecommerce specialist | $293-$380 | $328-$449 | $590-$1,166 | role page |
| Content writer | $160-$259 | $179-$306 | $323-$795 | role page |
| Accountant | $218-$264 | $244-$312 | $439-$810 | role page |
| Sales executive | $215-$389 | $241-$459 | $434-$1,193 | role page |
"Your cost to employ" is the posted wage plus a disclosed statutory-adds band. Hiring through an EOR instead of a contractor or your own entity adds a flat $599-699 per person per month on top of that. "Typical agency quote" applies a disclosed markup band on top of the cost to employ. None of the three is an observed billed rate, and the word for all is modeled: the full formula is on the methodology page.
The customer-support role page is worth opening before you budget anything, because the forty-five postings behind that band range from a Lahore call-center seat at $54 to $90 (PKR 15,000 to 25,000) up to a Karachi customer-services role at $414 (PKR 115,000). Same family, one order of magnitude apart. What separates them is scope: outbound calling against account ownership. Decide which one you are actually hiring before you use a band.
Sales executive carries the largest sample in the whole dataset at 146 postings, which matters for anyone staffing an outbound or inside-sales function rather than a support desk. The all-roles hiring cost guide shows every family together.
Every row is an employer-stated figure on a public posting, never an inferred or estimated one. Mustakbil supplied 566 of the 913 rows, Rozee.pk 334, Indeed Pakistan 12, Brightspyre 1. Rozee's inventory is deepest in exactly these support and administrative categories, which is why this pull is thicker than the first 150-row cut.
The posted-salary bias runs the other way from the developer index. Pay transparency is more common in call-center and administrative hiring than in senior technical roles, so this category is comparatively well represented, but it skews toward employers recruiting at volume. A boutique firm hiring one executive assistant is less likely to publish a number at all.
Full collection method, source list, and known biases are on the methodology page.
Agencies and BPO firms absorb recruiting, training, floor supervision, seat infrastructure, and coverage for absence. That overhead is the gap between the wages above and the hourly or per-seat rate a US buyer gets quoted. It is a business model, not a markup to be indignant about, but you cannot judge whether a specific quote is fair without knowing the wage underneath it.
We publish the wage because we observed it. The cost-to-employ and agency-quote columns above are computed, not observed: wage plus a disclosed statutory-adds band gets you the cost-to-employ figure, and a disclosed markup band applied to that figure gets you the typical-agency-quote range. Hiring through an EOR adds a flat $599-699 per person per month on top of the cost-to-employ figure, disclosed once rather than folded into every number, since it does not scale with wage. We show the derivation because a number with no derivation shown is exactly what this site exists to stop. Quoted outside this band? Ask us why.
Two structural notes that change how a BPO quote compares to a wage:
Seats, not headcount. BPO firms commonly price per seat rather than per person. A seat covering your business hours across a full week may be staffed by more than one agent, and it bundles workstation, connectivity, supervision, and backup coverage. Comparing a per-seat price against one person's monthly wage is not a like-for-like comparison, and vendors are rarely the ones to point that out.
Night-shift premium. Pakistan runs at UTC+5. Covering US business hours means an overnight shift, and agents working inverted schedules command more than the daytime postings in this index reflect, since most of these postings are for local-hours roles. Budget for that premium rather than discovering it in the quote.
What should I pay a Pakistani virtual assistant? Against this pull, posted VA wages average $157 to $238 a month (PKR 43,750 to 66,250) across eight postings, with the widest single posting running $36 to $144 (PKR 10,000 to 40,000) in Faisalabad and a Lahore personal-assistant posting reaching $180 to $432 (PKR 50,000 to 120,000). Eight observations is still a modest sample and we are printing it rather than smoothing it. Your cost through an agency sits above that wage; your cost through a direct hire sits close to it plus whatever compliance layer you use.
Direct hire or agency? A direct engagement, through an EOR or a contractor agreement, gets you close to the wage plus a compliance markup. An agency seat gets you the full overhead in exchange for recruiting, supervision, and coverage when someone is sick. Neither is universally cheaper. It depends on how much of that overhead you would otherwise carry yourself, and on whether you can absorb a single-point-of-failure absence. The hiring rails breakdown covers the tradeoff in full.
Is Pakistan a real BPO market or only a VA market? Both exist, and the support-side sample in this index is real. What Pakistan does not have is the Philippines' dedicated voice-BPO campus infrastructure at national scale. The Pakistan versus Philippines comparison puts the two side by side on the roles each actually fits.
Do outsourcing platforms exclude Pakistan? Some listing platforms have been reported to exclude Pakistan from certain seller pools or service categories. We have not audited platform policies ourselves, so treat that as a reported pattern to check against the specific platform you plan to use, not a confirmed rule. It is a market-access question, separate from wage or skill.
What does an employer owe on top of the wage? Employees' Old-Age Benefits Institution contributions, provincial social security, and gratuity accruing per completed year of service. On support roles these are a meaningful share of true cost. The employment rules page has the detail, including how gratuity rates differ by province.
The cost-to-employ and agency-quote columns above are computed from a disclosed formula, not collected vendor invoices, so treat them as a working model to negotiate against rather than an observed billed rate. We do not have per-seat BPO pricing collected against these wages, so the seat-versus-headcount gap described above stays qualitative. We have no month-over-month movement, this being the first scaled pull. And nothing here is ground-verified: this is index data from public postings, labeled as such, with a physical-visit verification program standing up separately.
Sources: SourceGrowth Pakistan wage-layer pull, 8/2026 (913 posted-salary observations; Mustakbil 566, Rozee.pk 334, Indeed Pakistan 12, Brightspyre 1), collection method and known biases published in full on the methodology page.