How Much Does an AtWork Franchise Owner Make?

Officially, Item 19 discloses Gross Revenue, Hours Billed, Gross Profits, and Gross Margin for 63 standard AtWork Personnel offices during calendar year 2025. It does not disclose Operating Profit, EBITDA, Net Income, owner salary, distributions, or cash available to an owner.

The franchisor defines Gross Profits as an office's Gross Revenue less payroll expenses and payroll taxes. Item 19 does not expressly say whether that payroll line includes internal office staff. This analysis treats it as assigned-worker payroll, consistent with the staffing Gross Margin context and Item 6's statement that AtWork does not process internal staff payroll, then deducts sales and recruiter wages separately. If reported Gross Profits already include those internal wages, the scenarios would understate owner benefit.

Source: 2026 AtWork Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 19, pp. 49-51. The $47.2 million high and the fact that only 28.57% of offices exceeded average Gross Revenue show why the median is the more decision-useful central anchor.

The estimate starts with official 2025 AtWork Personnel medians, subtracts current recurring FDD fees, adds role-specific wage assumptions, and leaves financing and personal taxes outside the operating model. The result is estimated pre-tax owner benefit, not an Item 19 result.

Owner-operator benefit

Cash remaining before personal income taxes and financing, with no manager wage deducted. It includes both residual business profit and the value of the full-time work performed by the owner.

Manager-run residual

Owner-operator benefit less the BLS manager wage proxy. It represents modeled business profit after paying a full-time manager, but before financing and personal taxes.

Interest and debt principal

Excluded because the FDD does not establish one common financed amount, rate, or term. Both would reduce cash available to a financed buyer.

Depreciation and capital expenditures

Excluded from the annual operating scenarios. Replacement equipment, remodels, and other capital needs can reduce cash flow.

Personal income taxes

Not calculated. Tax outcomes depend on entity structure, jurisdiction, deductions, and the owner's circumstances.

The fee rates are official FDD facts; the wage inputs are U.S. labor-market benchmarks; the 3% operating-cost reserve and three-user count are explicit analytical assumptions. They apply to a standard Personnel office, not the remote Professional format.

• Official FDD: 7% royalty on Personnel Gross Revenue and 0.5% Marketing Fund Contribution. Full-time placements carry a 10% royalty, so the model can understate fees when permanent-placement revenue is material. The franchisor may also adjust the royalty and may increase the Marketing Fund Contribution to 1.0%.
• FDD interpretation: The model treats Item 19 Gross Profits as revenue after assigned-worker payroll and payroll taxes, not after internal office staff. Note 3 does not state this expressly, making the treatment a material uncertainty.
• Official FDD: $10,000 per year of Local Advertising Expenditure and a Technology Bundle Fee of $149 per month per user. The model assumes three users: owner or manager, sales professional, and recruiter.
• Official operating structure: AtWork's franchise FAQ describes a preferred Personnel model with a sales professional and recruiter in addition to the owner or branch manager.
• Benchmark wages: $69,990 for a service sales representative from O*NET's 2025 service-sales wage data and $58,650 for a human resources specialist in employment services from the BLS May 2024 wage table.
• Editorial scenario assumption: 3% of Gross Revenue for employer payroll burden, rent, utilities, insurance, office administration, professional services, travel, and other operating costs not quantified in Item 19. Actual office-level costs may be materially higher or lower.
• Cash-flow treatment: The FDD's 1% Risk Management Reserve withholding is not treated as an expense because the reserve remains subject to return after settlement, but it can reduce near-term cash until the required reserve balance is funded.

FDD sources: 2026 AtWork Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 6, pp. 6-12; Item 15, p. 43; Item 19, pp. 49-51.

The modeled owner-operator benefit ranges from approximately $13,600 to $141,400, with a base result of about $44,400. These are independent annual scenarios for AtWork Personnel using 2025 FDD medians; they are not probabilities, forecasts, or franchisor-reported owner earnings.

The FDD reports median Gross Revenue and median Gross Profits separately. They may not belong to the same office, so each row is a cohort-based analytical combination rather than a reconstructed franchisee income statement. Calculations use full precision and are rounded to the nearest dollar only for display.

Owner involvement changes the modeled economics by roughly the cost of a full-time manager: $102,950 per year in this analysis. This is a benchmarked role adjustment for AtWork Personnel, not an official AtWork earnings figure.

Item 15 states that if the Operating Partner does not supervise the Staffing Business full time, the franchisee must appoint a trained full-time Manager. The official AtWork Personnel ownership page describes an active role involving team leadership, sales or recruiting, daily operations, and relationship management. The BLS general and operations manager wage table reports a May 2024 median of $102,950.

The manager-run model deducts only the national median wage. Actual cost may include payroll taxes, benefits, incentives, recruiting expense, and local wage premiums, so the manager-run residual may be lower. Conversely, an experienced owner who personally performs part of the sales or recruiting function could reduce internal payroll, but that would add more owner labor and is not assumed here.

In the base scenario, $381,900 of official median Gross Profits falls to approximately $44,381 of estimated owner-operator benefit after the modeled fee, staffing, technology, advertising, and overhead deductions. This bridge is derived from separate Item 19 medians and should not be read as an actual office profit-and-loss statement.

Confidence is Limited because the current FDD provides strong same-brand revenue and Gross Profits evidence but no office-level operating expenses or owner compensation. The estimate also excludes offices that closed during 2025 and combines separate median measures.

Item 19 included 63 standard offices that operated for the full year, but excluded 14 offices opened during 2025, six satellite offices, and 22 franchised offices that permanently closed during the year. Item 20 identifies the 2025 reductions as 14 terminations, one reacquisition, and seven offices that ceased operations for other reasons. Excluding closures can make the surviving full-year population look stronger than the full set of economic outcomes.

Source: 2026 AtWork Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 19, pp. 49-51, and Item 20, pp. 52-58.

At the official all-office medians, each additional one percentage point of Gross Revenue assigned to unreported costs reduces annual owner benefit by about $18,430. The table is an estimated sensitivity, not a probability distribution.

The reserve is a modeling device for internal payroll burden, occupancy, insurance, utilities, administration, professional services, travel, and similar costs not quantified by Item 19. It is unrelated to the FDD's Risk Management Reserve.

No defensible same-brand owner-earnings range can be produced for AtWork Professional from the 2026 FDD. The FDD states that no franchisees operated Professional Businesses as of December 31, 2025, so Item 19 contains no Professional revenue, Gross Profits, or owner-economics population.

AtWork Professional is a remote, specialized staffing format with a different royalty rate, staffing structure, insurance treatment, territory model, and cost base. Importing Personnel results into the Professional format would mix incompatible operating models. The official AtWork U.S. franchise site describes both formats, but it does not provide current Professional owner-profit evidence that can replace Item 19.

A buyer should verify the unreported expense lines and owner workload against Item 19 substantiation, current and former franchisees, and a location-specific operating budget. The following checks directly address the model's main uncertainties.

• Request the written substantiation supporting the 2025 Item 19 tables and ask whether Gross Revenue, Gross Profits, and Gross Margin can be reviewed at the same-office level.
• Ask comparable 1-3-year and 5+ year Personnel franchisees for internal payroll, commissions, occupancy, insurance, technology, local advertising, chargebacks, professional fees, and owner compensation.
• Confirm whether the owner works full time, performs sales or recruiting, or employs a full-time Manager, and record the actual weekly hours involved.
• Interview franchisees whose offices closed, terminated, were reacquired, or ceased operations during 2025 to understand outcomes missing from the Item 19 population.
• Confirm the exact royalty applicable to temporary staffing and full-time placements, any royalty adjustments or low-margin discounts, and whether the Marketing Fund Contribution has changed.
• Model the timing of the 1% Risk Management Reserve withholding, customer disputes, aged-receivable chargebacks, and any High-Risk Surcharge separately from operating profit.
• Obtain the latest FDD, amendments, and state-specific addenda before signing, then reconcile them to the proposed territory, office lease, staffing plan, and financing structure.

The strongest defensible range is approximately $14,000 to $141,000 of annual pre-tax owner-operator benefit for an AtWork Personnel office, with a base scenario near $44,000. It is scenario-based, not official owner earnings, and confidence is Limited. Under the same assumptions, manager-run residual profit ranges from approximately -$89,000 to $38,000.

The most important driver is the amount of Gross Profits left after percentage-based franchise fees and the internal staffing structure. The largest unresolved uncertainty is the actual office-level cost stack beneath Gross Profits, compounded by the exclusion of 22 offices that closed during 2025. A buyer should verify Item 19 substantiation, obtain matched office-level expense data, and compare active and former franchisee experiences before treating any scenario as applicable to a specific territory.