What 24/7 Phone Coverage Costs in Every State

• One full-time receptionist covers about 24% of the hours in a year. The other 76% (nights, weekends and holidays) go to voicemail unless someone else picks up.
• Wages are only part of the cost. In private industry, employers spent $11.51 an hour on benefits for office and administrative support workers on top of $25.22 in wages (June 2026). Paid leave, insurance, retirement plans and payroll taxes all sit in that line.
• Location changes the math. The same round-the-clock coverage costs $58,692 more a year in wages in California than in Mississippi.
• Count your after-hours calls first. Your phone records show how many calls arrive outside business hours. That number, not the hourly wage, decides whether a night and weekend shift is worth staffing, sharing or sending to an answering service. Our guide to virtual and in-house receptionist costs walks through the comparison.

We took the mean and median hourly wage for receptionists and information clerks (occupation code 43-4171) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey for May 2025: the national estimate, all 50 states and Washington, DC, and the 25 metropolitan areas with the most total jobs in the same survey. We multiplied each wage by 8,760, the hours in a 365-day year, to get the yearly wages for one person on the phone at every hour. Full-time equivalents assume 2,080 paid hours a year (40 hours × 52 weeks).

The benefits estimate is separate and labeled. BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (June 2026, Table 4) puts private-industry spending on office and administrative support workers at $25.22 an hour in wages and $11.51 in benefits. We applied that ratio (46 cents per wage dollar) to the national figure and rounded to the nearest thousand dollars.

Limits

• OEWS wages are straight-time gross pay. They exclude overtime, shift differentials and employer benefit costs, so real costs for night and holiday shifts are higher.
• The 8,760-hour figure assumes exactly one person on the line at every hour, with no overlap for breaks, training, sick days or handovers. Real schedules need more hours than that.
• The occupation includes information clerks as well as front desk receptionists, across all industries. Medical and legal front desk pay can differ.
• The May 2025 estimates pool survey responses collected over three years (November 2022 to May 2025). They describe typical pay, not what any one business pays.
• The benefits estimate borrows a broader occupational group’s ratio and private-industry costs per hour worked, so treat it as a rough guide.

• BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, state estimates, May 2025. www.bls.gov/oes/2025/may/oessrcst.htm
• BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, metropolitan area estimates, May 2025. www.bls.gov/oes/2025/may/oessrcma.htm
• BLS OEWS technical notes, May 2025. www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_tec.htm
• BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, Table 4, June 2026. www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.t04.htm

For the receptionist wage, minimum wage and other facts for one state, see our state answering service pages. For receptionist and answering service jobs, answering service businesses and unwanted-call complaints by state, see our answering service statistics.