Cost of Vacancy Calculator

With the Cost of Vacancy Calculator from mana HR you can work out the financial impact of an unfilled role in a few seconds, and see how your company compares to the European average. How much does it cost when a position stays open for a long time? Just fill in the fields and find out.

As of: July 2026

"Cost of vacancy" is the cost, or the negative impact on business results, of an unfilled role over the period it stays open.

Three metrics are generally used to calculate it:

1. Annual salary for the role to be filled
2. Impact of the role on business results (1 to 3)
3. Time-to-hire, or time-to-fill

Since the costs only start to fall once a new employee has actually started working at the company, we use time-to-fill in our calculation. Time-to-fill covers the period from the first day the role is open through to the employee's first working day in the position.

The formula for this metric is as follows:

Annual salary / average working days per year x factor x average time-to-fill = cost of vacancy

The starting point is the annual salary of the person who will fill the open role. This salary is then broken down to a daily rate. Since a role is normally only filled when it contributes a positive business result overall, this daily rate is multiplied by a factor for how much the role influences business results. Roles in sales, project management and leadership positions generally have a factor of 3, and skilled specialists a factor of 2. Trainees and cleaning staff are generally classed with a factor of 1, though you could argue that in case of doubt someone else would have to do the work, which is why this classification rarely reflects the true value of the activity.

This figure reflects the cost of the vacancy per day it stays open. Multiplied by the average number of days it stays open, you can work out the average cost of that role.

Source: Bottleneck analysis by the German Federal Employment Agency for the month of July

For better comparability, the completed vacancy times were converted to working days of a five-day week.