The Hidden Cost of FM Staffing Broker Markups

If you have ever wondered why a commercial HVAC tech costs your company $145 an hour when the same tech takes home $55, the answer is not complicated. It is a stack of markups, handoffs, and intermediaries, and almost none of it is disclosed on the invoice.

Facility management staffing brokers operate in a pricing model that has not meaningfully changed in two decades. A client pays the broker. The broker pays the staffing agency. The staffing agency pays the recruiter. The recruiter pays the technician. Every layer takes a cut, and every layer calls their cut "operational overhead." By the time the work actually happens, 40-60% of the billed rate has evaporated into the handoff chain.

That number is not invented. It is the figure we publish on our comparison page because it is what the market actually runs. Industry analysts cite similar ranges. Brokers themselves do not dispute it — they just do not put it on the invoice.

Where The Markup Actually Goes

The 40-60% broker markup breaks down into three buckets, and understanding each one is how you separate legitimate service from pure rent extraction.

1. Recruiter Commission (8-15%)

The first cut goes to whoever sourced the technician. In traditional FM staffing, that is usually an external recruiter or an internal sourcing team working on commission. Every hour the tech works, the recruiter earns a residual. On long placements, that residual can persist for the lifetime of the assignment.

This is the only part of the markup that has a defensible rationale. Recruiters do real work: they find the candidates, run the screening, verify certifications, and handle the initial negotiation. The problem is not that they get paid. The problem is that the fee is often opaque, runs indefinitely, and gets re-extracted every time a client renews a contract.

2. Broker Overhead (15-25%)

This is the middle layer, and it is the hardest to justify. Broker overhead covers office costs, account managers, back-office billing, compliance paperwork, and the margin the broker needs to hit their quarterly targets. None of this touches the actual work. None of it reaches the technician or improves the quality of the dispatch.

In practice, broker overhead is the cost of running a sales organization that exists to sign clients and manage invoices. The technician does not benefit. The client does not benefit. The broker benefits, and so does whatever private equity firm owns the broker.