Virtual Assistant Statistics 2026: Rates, Jobs, Salaries
A virtual assistant in the United States earns an average of $22.30 an hour (Indeed, 2026), while a full-time Filipino virtual assistant costs $349 to $1,167 a month (OnlineJobs.ph salary guide, 2025). The in-house alternative, an executive assistant, has a median wage of $76,590 a year (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025).
“Virtual assistant” means three things in the data: a remote human contractor, an employed administrative or executive assistant, and AI software. The numbers below keep them apart.
How many virtual assistants are there
No government agency publishes a count of virtual assistants. The job has no occupation code of its own, so any “number of VAs worldwide” figure is an estimate. These official numbers bracket it.
3,515,600 people work as secretaries and administrative assistants in the U.S. (BLS, 2025). 489,300 of them are executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants.
11.9 million Americans were independent contractors on their sole or main job in July 2023, or 7.4% of total employment (BLS Contingent and Alternative Employment Arrangements, 2024). Freelance VAs sit inside this group.
72.9 million Americans did some independent work in 2025, and 42% of independents rely on digital platforms to find it (MBO Partners State of Independence, 2025). MBO sells services to independent workers, and its definition is far broader than the BLS one.
How big is the offshore virtual assistant workforce
1.89 million people worked in the Philippine IT and business process management industry in 2025, generating $40.3 billion in revenue (IBPAP 2026 Industry Overview, 2026). IBPAP is the industry’s trade association, and the figure spans contact centers, finance and IT, so it is a ceiling on the VA workforce, not a count.
How much does a virtual assistant cost per hour
$22.30 an hour is the average U.S. virtual assistant wage, with a low of $13.67 and a high of $36.39, from 466 job-posting salaries (Indeed, September 2026).
$10 to $20 an hour is the median range for virtual assistants worldwide on Upwork (Upwork, 2026). Upwork earns fees on these contracts.
$12 to $50+ an hour is what established North American VAs charge on Upwork: $12 to $20+ for clerical work, $20 to $35+ for marketing and bookkeeping support, and $38 to $50+ for executive assistant work (Upwork, 2026).
$3 to $5 an hour is the beginner rate for a Filipino virtual assistant, $5 to $9 for intermediate, and $8 and up for expert (OnlineJobs.ph, 2025). OnlineJobs.ph is a job board for Filipino remote workers and draws the ranges from its own database.
$349 to $718 a month is the full-time (40 hours a week) beginner range on the same guide, $693 to $1,167 for intermediate, and $1,049 and up for expert (OnlineJobs.ph, 2025).
₱27,549 a month is the average virtual assistant salary reported in the Philippines, from about 1,200 salaries (Indeed Philippines, September 2026).
How much does an executive assistant make
$76,590 is the median annual wage for executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants, the highest-paid group in the occupation (BLS, May 2025).
$48,310 a year, or $23.23 an hour, is the median for all secretaries and administrative assistants (BLS, May 2025). The lowest 10% earned under $35,360 and the highest 10% more than $77,720.
$70,000 is the average annual compensation administrative professionals reported in a survey of more than 3,700 of them (American Society of Administrative Professionals, 2025). It is an average of self-reported pay, not comparable to the BLS median.
$12,000 more a year is what administrative professionals who work directly with executives earn, on average, compared with those in non-executive support roles (ASAP, 2025).
What an assistant costs beyond salary
31.5% of what a private employer spends on a full-time worker goes to benefits, not wages (BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026). Wages and salaries are the other 68.5%.
$46.89 per hour worked is the average total compensation cost for private industry workers: $32.82 in wages and $14.07 in benefits (BLS, June 2026).
Is the assistant job declining
2% decline: employment of secretaries and administrative assistants is projected to fall from 2025 to 2035, a net loss of about 75,300 jobs (BLS, 2025-35 projections).
0%: executive assistants are projected flat, a change of just 100 jobs over the decade (BLS, 2025-35 projections). General secretaries and administrative assistants take the largest hit, at -6%, or 114,100 jobs.
+5%: medical secretaries are the one group projected to grow, adding about 47,100 jobs (BLS, 2025-35 projections).
About 314,400 openings a year are still projected, all of them from replacing people who change occupations or leave the labor force (BLS, 2025-35 projections).
BLS names AI as a cause. Its outlook says technology, “including artificial intelligence (AI) systems and digital tools,” lets staff prepare their own documents, and many managers now do assistants’ former tasks (BLS, 2025).
53% of administrative professionals used AI at work in 2025, up from 26% in 2024, and Microsoft Copilot use among them rose from 13% to 43% (ASAP, 2025).
What assistants spend their time on
80% of administrative professionals focus heavily on clerical tasks such as organizational mail and email and answering customer inquiries (ASAP, 2025).
72% of a CEO’s work time is spent in meetings, 37 of them in an average week, across a 62.5-hour workweek (Harvard Business Review, Porter and Nohria, 2018). The study is from 2018 but remains the canonical one: it tracked 27 CEOs around the clock for 13 weeks, nearly 60,000 hours.
28% of the average interaction worker’s week goes to managing email, and nearly 20 percent to looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help (McKinsey Global Institute, 2012). Old, and still the most-cited estimate of email’s share of the workweek.
117 emails and 153 Teams messages reach the average worker each weekday, and Microsoft 365 users are interrupted every 2 minutes by a meeting, email or notification (Microsoft Work Trend Index, 2025).
Is the “virtual assistant market” about people or software
$14.10 billion by 2030 is the forecast for the global intelligent virtual assistant market, up from an estimated $2.48 billion in 2022, a 24.3% compound annual growth rate (Grand View Research, 2023). It is a forecast, and it measures software (chatbots, voice assistants, smart speakers), not human VAs. The two get mixed up constantly in market-size citations.
Where AI assistants pick up the scheduling and inbox load
Carly is an AI assistant that handles that work across email and calendar. It schedules meetings, triages the inbox, and follows up when a thread goes quiet. Carly connects to thousands of apps. For comparisons, see the best AI executive assistants, and for human support, the best virtual assistant companies.
FAQ
How much does a virtual assistant cost per hour? U.S. virtual assistants average $22.30 an hour (Indeed, 2026). Upwork’s median range is $10 to $20 (Upwork, 2026). Filipino VAs run $3 to $5 an hour for beginners and $8 and up for experts (OnlineJobs.ph, 2025).
How many virtual assistants are there? No official count exists. The U.S. has 3,515,600 secretaries and administrative assistants (BLS, 2025) and 11.9 million independent contractors (BLS, 2024, July 2023 data). The Philippine IT-BPM industry, which includes VAs, employs 1.89 million (IBPAP, 2026).
How much does an executive assistant make? The median wage for executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants is $76,590 a year, against $48,310 for all secretaries and administrative assistants (BLS, May 2025). Benefits are another 31.5% of total compensation for full-time private workers (BLS, June 2026).
Is the executive assistant job declining? The wider occupation is projected to shrink 2% from 2025 to 2035, a loss of about 75,300 jobs. Executive assistants are projected flat at 0% (BLS, 2025-35 projections).
Related: AI in the Workplace Statistics · Meeting Statistics · Email Statistics · Best AI executive assistants · Best virtual assistant companies · Best AI virtual assistants for small business
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