How to compare a nearshore engineer to a US hire using only public BLS data
US hiring teams often compare a nearshore rate with a US salary and stop there. That comparison is incomplete: a salaried employee also costs benefits, paid leave and the employer's payroll taxes. The US government publishes those pieces. You can rebuild a fully loaded US cost from them, then compare it with an all-in hourly rate, without relying on a vendor's private spreadsheet. This…
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes wage data that can be used to compare the cost of a nearshore engineer to a US hire. While BLS does not have a specific wage category for "machine learning engineer" or "data engineer", the closest category is "software developers". The median annual wage for software developers in May 2025 was $135,980, with the 90th percentile earning more than $214,670.
To compare this to a US hire's fully loaded cost, the wage must be turned into a fully loaded employer cost. In June 2026, the BLS reported that total compensation averaged $46.89 per hour worked, with wages and salaries accounting for 70% of that total, or $32.82 per hour. By dividing the median wage by 0.70, we get $194,257 as the fully loaded US cost for a software developer.
To make a fair comparison, the all-in hourly rate for a nearshore engineer should also be priced on an annual basis. This can be done by multiplying the hourly rate by 2,080 hours (the full-time work year used by the BLS). Using ranges Bromena published in October 2026 for AI and data roles, the fully loaded US cost ranges from $135,200 to $306,671, compared to $120,640 to $183,040 for the nearshore engineer.
This results in nearshore engineers costing 29-40% less than a fully loaded US hire, based on these published rates.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
