How Much Should You Pay a Filipino Virtual Assistant in 2026?

I've seen salaries as low as $100 per month and as high as like $20,000 per month for a virtual assistant. So what is realistic and what does this actually cost? Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing Podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. Today, I'm going to cover virtual assistant salaries in depth, definitive. This is what you will actually find today. I'm in episode 471. If you're interested in seeing the rest of them, you can head to johnjonas.com or you can check out my YouTube channel, or the podcast is available anywhere you get your podcasts, The Secret Sauce of Outsourcing Podcast. Let's get into virtual assistant salaries. So number 1, I'm only going to talk about the Philippines, and actually in these numbers that I just mentioned, they were just for the Philippines. And the reason the Philippines only is because it is not the cheapest place and it is not on the upper end, but what it is is a really good balance of affordability, plus really, really high quality work. The culture of the Philippines lends itself to better people than anywhere else in the world. And that's not that you can't find good people anywhere. You definitely can. You can find great people anywhere in the world. You just significantly increase your chances in the Philippines versus other places. So those two stories that I mentioned in the beginning, let me tell you what those actually are. So years and years ago, this is probably 2008, 2008, I hired someone at $100 a month for full-time work. She was in the Philippines, full-time working, $100 a month. What I didn't know was she only had one arm and she was doing data entry for me, one-armed, and she thought she would never be able to work in her life. Now, $100 a month is not sufficient and certainly not for anybody. Not then. She was living with her parents. She was handicapped, and it's certainly not enough today. Now the other story, $20,000 a month. That is the current salary of someone in the Philippines who I know of. It feels completely insane to me, but also all of his peers who work with him say, oh yeah, he's worth that. He is the best, the single best AI person in the Philippines, which, you know, I guess Facebook has been giving million-dollar bonuses to people willing to sign on for AI, and my guess is this guy is one of the best of the best in the world, and so maybe $20,000 a month for him is very reasonable. But that's not what you're actually looking for. What you're looking for is how much are actual wages? So let me tell you what the minimum wage in the Philippines is. Now, the Philippines doesn't have a national minimum wage. They have wages set by different provinces. So in Manila, which is the highest wage place in the Philippines, the minimum wage is $11.70 a day. So if you're going to work 8 hours a day, $11.70, I don't know, it's $1.50, let's say, $1.50. And that's a daily minimum wage. That's how they set their wage. It's a daily minimum. If someone works for you for the day, this is what you must pay them in Manila. Now, Manila is definitely the highest wage place in the Philippines. And then every other country, which hopefully you can see this wage list here, it is all set in Filipino pesos. And so in Manila, it's between 658 to 695 per day. And then the monthly is an equivalent of 26 days a month, which is quite a bit more than what people actually usually work, which is quite a bit more than what people— what you would be used to working, at least in the US. But there's the monthly rate that goes along with it, which in Manila, that monthly rate is 17,000 to 18,000 Filipino pesos. Now, the conversion rate right now is about 58 to 1. 58 pesos to $1. But if we look at the minimum wages in other places in the Philippines and we average it across all those other regions. So, I'm looking at like— I mean, you're looking at like 15 different regions here. The average minimum wage is about 480 pesos per day. Which at 58 pesos per dollar is about $8.25 per day. And if you're going to work 8 hours, which they're not working 8 hours. They're working 10 hours. Per day, you're looking at about, let's say, a dollar an hour as the minimum wage government mandated as an average across the Philippines. Now, is that a reasonable wage for a virtual assistant? Absolutely not. That is completely unacceptable. A dollar an hour is not acceptable in any situation. So what is? So here's what we have found based off of, well, at OnlineJobs, we have 4 million profiles of Filipino workers. They tell us what they're looking to make, and if you as a worker say you're going to make this way high amount, well, your chances of getting hired are way less. And so you have some people that are like, well, I'll just work for nothing because they just need a job. So we take an average in there and we discard some of the low, we discard some of the high. What we find today is the correct wage is somewhere between $4 and $7 an hour. And that would be for either for a part-time job or a full-time job. A full-time job, we would expect them to work about 172 hours per month. That's about 40 hours a week and is about just over 4 weeks in a month. So that wage would be $4 to $7 an hour. At the lower end of that, you can still find really good people. At the upper end of that, you can still find kind of mediocre people. Generally though, on the lower end at $4 an hour, you're going to find newer people, and at the upper end at $7 an hour, you're going to find better people. Now, the current low that we suggest is $3 an hour as the absolute minimum that you should be able to pay people. Now, you will find people asking for $2.50 an hour, which you can pay that. It's not what we recommend. As a monthly, we recommend the lowest of the low is $400 US per month. Now, that recommendation is based off of all kinds of things, including living expenses and how they're actually living at $400 a month. They're not living on their own. They're not renting an apartment and living by themselves and paying other utilities. They're living with their parents. They're helping support another income that is helping to pay for housing and their food and their utilities and their cost of life. So at $400 a month, they're not like making a great income, but in a lot of places in the Philippines, it's an acceptable income. In Manila, it's not acceptable at $400 a month. Just because it's more than the minimum, minimum wage does not mean someone is at any sort of reasonable level at that amount. Manila, again, is quite a bit more expensive than anywhere else in the country. So then at the upper end of that, at $7 an hour, you're starting to get to people who are like, they've been in this a while, they probably have perfect English, they have a number of years of experience, and you're finding really, really high quality people. Now, just to give you an idea of what these numbers actually come out to, in a full-time wage at $4 an hour, you're looking at $680 a month. At $7 an hour, you're looking at about $1,200 a month. Now, that person works full-time for you in your business, 172 hours a month, and that would be the wage that you would pay. And that's, that's all of it. So what's the average wage? The average wage right now is probably about $900 a month. And at $900 a month in the Philippines, someone is living pretty well. They're not on the upper end of society, but they're definitely not in poverty either. At $900 a month, they're able to live on their own. Usually you would have a husband and wife, maybe some kids. You have husband and wife both working. They're both making, let's say, $700 to $1,200 a month. Maybe they're making $1,500 to $2,000 a month. They are living in their own home. They might have their own car, which is on the upper end of things in the Philippines. Someone who has their own car is definitely on the upper end. And at that, they might have their own car with both of them working online as a VA. They're eating 3 meals a day, which, let's go back to this, at the minimum wage, they're not eating 3 meals a day. They're using that gotten money to pay 100% for food, and that is probably buying them 2 meals a day because there are always other things you have to pay for. Now, what kind of people can you find in this range of $4 to $7 an hour? Well, realistically, you can find anything. You can find programmers, you can find designers, you can find social media people, you can find Facebook marketing experts, you can find someone to run your Facebook ads, you can find someone to run your Google ads, you can find a lead generator, you can find someone to run— to do sales phone calls. You can find anybody within this range. Now, often I will see business owners in Australia, in the US, in the UK who are like, oh well, if I can pay $4 to $7 an hour, then I can pay $10 an hour and find the best of the best. And sometimes that is true. And here's what I have found. When you're looking for highly specialized people, people who have specialty skills, someone who's been running Facebook ads for 10 years, So they clearly know what they're doing. A really, really high-end programmer, they're going to command higher rates than $4 to $7 an hour. You're going to pay $10 an hour. You could pay $15 an hour. And when you do pay that, you probably are getting someone who's really experienced. And as a business owner, that sounds so appealing. However, here's the caveat in this. When you're in the virtual assistant space, when you go to paying wages that are above normal, you start to attract people who have above normal experience. And in the virtual assistant space, that means they have different experience in working with employers. They've typically figured out, oh, I know how to get a job, and so yeah, I'm gonna ask for $15 an hour and I'm gonna do $5 an hour work because that employer is probably pretty dumb and they don't know what they're doing, especially if they're willing to pay $15 an hour for an admin assistant. Or for someone to run their Google Ads, then they probably don't know and they just think, oh, if I pay more, I'm going to get more. And so I charge $15 an hour, I do $5 an hour work, or I charge $15 an hour, I pay someone else $4 an hour to do this work, and I'm doing really well. And what you don't know is the outsourcing of it is happening because you're overpaying and you're actually attracting bad people because you're trying to overpay. Now, that's not always the case, and I have some people that are on the upper end, right? but generally $4 to $7 an hour is the sweet spot. Now let me shift that sweet spot for you. So if you're looking at a programmer, you're probably in the $6 to $9 an hour, in a good programmer. If you're looking for the best of the best in AI, you're definitely above that. In fact, if you're looking for the best of the best in anything, you're above that. You're in the $6 to $9 an hour range. If you're looking for a data entry person, you're below that. You're in the $3 to $5 an hour. But that's where the sweet spot is, is $4 to $7 an hour where you're gonna find out of the Philippines especially, you're gonna find amazing people who really want to do good work, who want to contribute to your business, who want to stick around and be loyal and honest to you, who want to do the work and impress you and have you be like, "Hey, wow, that was great stuff. Let me give you more to do." So that they can hopefully upskill themselves and over time get raises and make a career out of it. Now, what are you getting in that $4 to $7 an hour range? Well, typically you're getting someone who is college educated. Yes. University education. They grew up speaking English, so they are fluent in English. They probably have some specialty training. They have a number of years, 2 to 5 years, 2 to 10 years of work experience. And in that work experience, they may have been teaching English to people in Japan, or they may have been running marketing campaigns for the university, or they may have been working as a teller at a bank. Whatever it is, they probably have a number of years of experience. So you have college degree, which is where people learn to think. You have a number of years of experience. You have fluent English. You put all these things together with they look up to foreign bosses, and your $4 to $7 an hour is going to go a really long way in the Philippines. So let's talk about exploitation for a second. So I talked about the minimum wage, which was like $8 a day versus the upper end of it in the Philippines, making $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 a month, which is, it's pretty rare, but it exists. And then the real like sweet spot of $4 to $7 an hour. Here's what you're going to find in terms of exploitation. So if you're trying to pay someone $200 a month, you are likely exploiting. At $400 a month, someone accepting that job, it either means they're not working, they don't have a job, they don't have income, or they have $400 a month, which is sufficient to live when you're living with your parents. When you start to pay a little bit more, you start to get people who otherwise their option is to commute to work. And typically the option is to leave their hometown because they live in the provinces. They're going to travel to Manila. They're going to leave their family, their wife and their kids in the province. They're going to rent a place in Manila, a small, really, really low-end shanty in Manila where they're going to find a job. And that job is going to pay them $500 per month, $600 per month. And now they're able to work, they're able to pay their rent and pay their food, and then they're going to send money home to their province, to their family, to pay their rent and pay their food. And now you're doubling their expenses, right? Versus you hiring someone and letting them stay in the province where rent is less and food is less, and they just now have to pay utilities, which is probably about the same. And now that person making $700 a month is actually living like pretty well. In fact, I had multiple people on my team in the Philippines tell me they lend money to their dad on a regular basis because they make more money than their dad does. Or one of my guys told me he's teaching his friends to do what he does because he makes more than double what any of them make. And as you start hiring people, what you'll find is number one, they're super grateful to have a job. They're grateful to you for providing a job where the alternative is this 2-hour daily commute into work and back while they're not living at home with their family. They've traveled somewhere else in the province, or they go overseas for 9 months and work and live as low as they can so that they can send money home to support the family. But then for 9 months at a time, they're away from their wife and their kids. It's a really terrible situation, but that's like 10% of the Philippines lives outside of the Philippines because that's what they have to do to support their families. Or like I said, they work for you and you pay them a reasonable wage, $4 to $7 an hour, and they live at home, they're with their family, they make enough to survive, they make enough to actually move themselves up and out of poverty and to support their community and to teach, to provide a good education to their kids so their kids continue to grow and then their kids are gonna get jobs working as VAs making $8 to $12 an hour in 15 years when the wages have gone up even more. So how much should you be paying? The correct answer right now, the sweet spot, is really $4 to $7 an hour for really talented, good quality people. People who want to contribute to your business, who want to be loyal and hardworking and honest. $4 to $7 an hour.