Gallup says replacing one employee can cost one-half to two times annual salary. SHRM's 2025 guidance gives the same 50-200% range depending on level. Treat it as a planning range, not a universal average.
SHRM reported a nearly $4,700 average cost per hire in 2022 benchmarking data. That is a recruiting benchmark, not the full cost of turnover, which can also include vacancy coverage, manager time, training, and ramp-up losses.
Estimate annual departures, multiply by a defensible cost per departure, and document every input. A salary-share scenario uses team size × turnover rate × average salary × replacement-cost percentage. A bottom-up model adds recruiting, vacancy, onboarding, training, and ramp-up costs.
Role-specific evidence is limited. The 2026 NSI hospital survey reported $60,090 as the average cost of one bedside RN turnover across participating acute-care hospitals. That figure should not be generalized to other jobs or industries.
Scheduling can remove one source of friction for shift teams, but it is not a universal retention fix. Measure exit reasons first. If late rotas, ignored availability, or difficult shift changes appear repeatedly, improving those processes may reduce avoidable churn.
Get practical ideas
Open a ready-made prompt to summarize the article and apply it to your team.
How much does employee turnover cost? The defensible answer is a range, not one universal percentage.
Gallup estimates that replacing one employee can cost one-half to two times annual salary. SHRM's 2025 guidance repeats the 50-200% range, depending on the employee's level. Both are planning benchmarks. Neither is a substitute for your own recruiting, vacancy, training, and ramp-up costs.
Important
Quote-ready summary: Gallup puts employee replacement cost at 50-200% of
annual salary. SHRM reported a nearly $4,700 average cost per hire, which is
narrower than total turnover cost. In a 2026 survey of 527 acute-care
hospitals, NSI reported $60,090 as the average cost of one bedside RN
turnover.
Employee turnover cost benchmarks
50-200% of annual salary: Gallup's broad replacement-cost range for one employee.
50-200% by employee level: SHRM's January 2025 guidance uses the same range and links to its turnover-cost worksheet.
Nearly $4,700 per hire: SHRM's 2022 recruiting benchmark. This is not a complete turnover-cost estimate.
$60,090 per bedside RN departure: NSI's 2026 hospital survey benchmark, based on calendar-year 2025 data.
$5.19 million per hospital: the average annual RN-turnover loss reported by participating hospitals in the same NSI survey.
52% of voluntary exits described as preventable: Gallup's 2019 finding that the employee believed the manager or organization could have done something to prevent the departure.
These figures answer different questions. Putting them in one table without definitions makes the numbers look more precise than they are.
Survey of 527 US acute-care hospitals covering 2025
A benchmark for retail, hospitality, or office jobs
Employee turnover cost calculator
This calculator shows four salary-share scenarios side by side. It does not decide which percentage is correct for your business.
Employee Turnover Cost Calculator
Compare four replacement-cost scenarios using the same team, turnover rate, and salary.
20% salary scenario
$80,000
50% Gallup lower bound
$200,000
100% salary scenario
$400,000
200% Gallup upper bound
$800,000
These are scenarios, not predictions. Replace the salary-share assumption with your own recruiting, vacancy, training, and ramp-up costs when those numbers are available.
Annual turnover cost = team size × annual turnover rate × average salary × replacement-cost percentage
For a 25-person team with 50% annual turnover and a $32,000 average salary, the calculator estimates 12.5 departures a year. The results range from $80,000 at 20% of salary to $800,000 at 200%.
What the 50-200% range actually means
The range is wide because "replacement cost" can include very different items:
job advertising, agency fees, screening, and recruiting tools
recruiter and manager time spent selecting a replacement
overtime, temporary cover, or lost output while the role is vacant
onboarding and formal training
coworker time spent supporting the new hire
lower output or more errors during ramp-up
lost customer or operational knowledge
Gallup's published example makes its math reproducible. It used a 100-person company, a $50,000 average salary, and a 26.3% turnover rate. At the 50% lower bound, the estimate is $657,500. At the 200% upper bound, it is $2.63 million. Gallup rounded those figures to approximately $660,000 and $2.6 million.
That does not prove every replacement costs 50-200% of salary. It shows how Gallup applied its planning range to one company model.
Cost per hire is not total turnover cost
The nearly $4,700 SHRM figure is often copied into articles as "the cost of turnover." That is too broad.
SHRM describes it as average cost per hire. The same article says managers and departmental leaders spend time screening, interviewing, and supporting the hiring process. Those time costs, vacancy effects, training, and ramp-up losses may sit outside a recruiting metric.
Use the $4,700 benchmark when you need a reference for hiring spend. Use a bottom-up worksheet when you need the financial effect of one departure.
Build a bottom-up turnover estimate
A bottom-up estimate is slower but more useful than picking a salary percentage without evidence.
Cost input
Calculation
Evidence to collect
Vacancy coverage
overtime + temporary cover + outsourced work
payroll and vendor invoices
Recruiting
advertising + agency + screening + tools
recruiting invoices
Selection time
staff hours × loaded hourly cost
interview calendars and payroll cost
Onboarding
orientation + equipment + admin + training
onboarding checklist and invoices
Ramp-up
expected output gap × time to target performance
team output or service data
Separation
exit admin + accrued obligations + knowledge transfer
HR and payroll records
Add those items to get cost per departure. Multiply by the number of departures during the period for annual turnover cost.
Keep voluntary and involuntary turnover separate. The business may be able to act on late schedules or poor management. It cannot retain someone who relocates, retires, or leaves for a career change in the same way.
965,886 healthcare workers and 262,405 registered nurses
calendar-year 2025 data
temporary, agency, and travel staff excluded
$60,090 average cost per bedside RN turnover
$5.19 million average annual RN-turnover loss per hospital
approximately $295,000 in annual cost or savings for each one-point change in RN turnover
NSI says the $60,090 figure is based on the average of cost ranges selected by respondents. It is survey evidence, not an audited accounting result, and it applies to bedside nursing in participating hospitals.
Turnover is not one problem. Compensation, management, workload, career options, commute, health, retirement, and scheduling can all contribute.
Use exit interviews and stay interviews to separate them. Then connect each fix to the cause it can plausibly change. If employees repeatedly mention late rotas, ignored availability, or difficult shift changes, scheduling is a reasonable operational target. If they leave for pay or career growth, scheduling software will not solve it.
Gallup found that 52% of voluntary leavers believed their manager or organization could have done something to prevent the exit. That finding supports asking earlier. It does not mean 52% of all turnover is automatically recoverable.
Turnozo helps small shift teams publish schedules, collect availability and time-off requests, handle open shifts and swaps, and track worked hours. Those workflows can remove scheduling friction. They do not guarantee lower turnover, and Turnozo does not calculate a legally or financially complete replacement cost for you.
Methodology and limitations
The calculator is a scenario model. It multiplies expected departures by a salary-share assumption.
The 20%, 100%, and 200% rows are comparison scenarios. Gallup's published range starts at 50% and ends at 200%.
Gallup's $1 trillion estimate and 100-person example were published in 2019 using a 2017 turnover rate. They are historical models, not a current BLS total.
SHRM's nearly $4,700 figure is cost per hire, not total replacement cost.
NSI's 2026 report describes calendar-year 2025 data from participating acute-care hospitals.
Annual turnover rate can exceed 100% when multiple people cycle through the same position during a year.
Use average headcount, not ending headcount, when calculating your own turnover rate.
The page intentionally does not chart these four sources together. Their populations and definitions are not comparable, so a shared axis would create false precision. The source table and calculator keep the assumptions visible instead.
