Virtual Assistant & Executive Assistant Statistics 2026
The assistant — executive, administrative, or virtual — is one of the oldest support roles in business and one of the most quietly disrupted. The data tells a clear story: a huge workforce, a real and rising cost, a flat-to-declining outlook that government economists tie directly to AI, and a job defined by absorbing other people’s email and calendars. Here are the executive and virtual assistant statistics worth knowing in 2026, each sourced inline.
One distinction up front, because it’s the most common error in this topic: the human assistant workforce and the AI “virtual assistant” software market (think voice assistants and chatbots) are two different things. We keep them separate below.
How many assistants there are
3,453,100 people work as secretaries and administrative assistants in the U.S. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024). It remains one of the largest occupational groups in the country.
502,800 of those are executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants specifically (BLS, 2024) — the higher-level role that supports senior leaders.
Where the role is heading
0% growth — employment of secretaries and administrative assistants is projected to see “little or no change” from 2024 to 2034, a net decline of about 12,400 jobs (BLS, 2024). For executive assistants specifically, BLS projects a 2% decline.
The reason is on the record: BLS attributes the flat-to-declining outlook to AI and digital tools letting staff prepare their own documents, and to managers absorbing tasks once handled by assistants. The one sub-group projected to grow is medical secretaries, at +4%.
Even with the decline, there are still about 358,300 openings a year, mostly to replace people who change jobs or leave the workforce (BLS, 2024).
What an assistant costs
$47,460 is the median annual wage for secretaries and administrative assistants (BLS, May 2024).
$74,260 is the median for executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants — the highest-paid sub-group (BLS, May 2024). That figure is the real benchmark a founder or executive weighs when deciding whether to hire support — and it’s before benefits, payroll taxes, and overhead.
The AI virtual-assistant market is a different thing
When market reports cite enormous “virtual assistant” growth, check what they’re measuring. The intelligent virtual assistant market — chatbots, voice assistants, and smart speakers, i.e. software — is projected to reach $14.1 billion by 2030 at a 24.3% CAGR (Grand View Research, 2023). That’s a technology market, not the human-VA labor market — and most “VA services” market reports blend human, AI, and hybrid delivery together, so read them with that caveat.
The work an assistant actually absorbs
What does the role exist to handle? The data on executives’ time answers it. CEOs work an average of 62.5 hours a week and spend 72% of their time in meetings — across 37 meetings a week (Harvard Business Review, Porter & Nohria, 2018). The average knowledge worker spends about 28% of the week on email and another 19% just searching for internal information (McKinsey Global Institute, 2012).
More broadly, 57% of the average worker’s time goes to communicating — meetings, email, chat — rather than creating (Microsoft Work Trend Index, 2023), and 68% say they don’t have enough uninterrupted focus time. That coordination load — scheduling, inbox triage, information-wrangling — is precisely what an assistant is hired to take off a leader’s plate.
What the numbers add up to
A multi-million-person profession, an executive assistant costing around $74,000 a year, a role government economists expect to shrink because software now does more of it — and a mountain of email-and-calendar coordination that someone, or something, has to absorb.
That’s the equation behind the rise of the AI assistant. An AI executive assistant handles the scheduling, inbox triage, and follow-up an EA traditionally owns — across email and calendar — without the salary. Carly does that work for a starting price of $35/month, a different order of magnitude from a $74,000 hire. For the human side, see the best virtual assistant companies and best AI virtual assistants for small business roundups.
FAQ
How much does an executive assistant cost? The median wage for executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants is $74,260 a year (BLS, May 2024), before benefits and overhead. General administrative assistants have a median of $47,460.
Is the executive assistant job declining? Slightly — BLS projects a 2% decline for executive assistants and little-to-no change overall through 2034, attributing it to AI and digital tools and to managers handling more tasks themselves (BLS, 2024).
How many administrative assistants are there in the U.S.? About 3.45 million secretaries and administrative assistants, including roughly 502,800 executive assistants (BLS, 2024).
What’s the difference between the VA market and the AI assistant market? “Virtual assistant” can mean a human contractor or AI software. The intelligent-virtual-assistant software market (chatbots, voice assistants) is projected near $14.1 billion by 2030 (Grand View Research, 2023); the human-VA labor market is tracked separately and rarely isolated cleanly in market reports.
Related: AI in the Workplace Statistics 2026 · Meeting Statistics 2026 · Best AI executive assistants · Best virtual assistant companies
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