How Much Does a Spherion Franchise Owner Make?

Officially, Item 19 reports FY2025 Sales, Gross Profit, and Gross Profit Percentage—not owner earnings—for 57 Spherion General Staffing franchisees that operated for the full fiscal year. The figures are reported per franchisee: multiple Franchise Agreements are combined, and multiple offices under one agreement are aggregated. That means the disclosed median is not necessarily a one-office or one-territory result.

The strongest central evidence is the median rather than the average. The official average was $6,947,291 in Sales and $1,424,192 in Gross Profit, but only 16 of 57 franchisees exceeded average Sales and only 17 of 57 exceeded average Gross Profit. The maximum Sales figure was $55,061,325, so larger portfolios can pull the average upward. Spherion’s official investment and earnings page publicly repeats the FY2025 average figures and population warning.

Source: 2026 Spherion FDD, Item 19, pp. 46–49. Cohort medians describe historical groups; they are not probabilities or promises for a new franchisee. The 1–5 year cohort excludes one Salt Lake City resale.

The estimate starts with the official FY2025 median, derives the franchisee’s 70% commission, and then deducts recurring franchise obligations and modeled local office costs. It applies to a standard General Staffing operating structure anchored to the Item 19 population, although many reporting franchisees also held a Professional Services Addendum and some results aggregate more than one office.

Revenue anchor

80%, 100%, and 120% of the official $4,051,231 median Sales and $828,347 median Gross Profit. The spread is analytical, not FDD-reported.

Franchise commission

70% of Temporary Gross Profits and Full-Time Placement Sales under Item 6. The model applies 70% to Item 19 Gross Profit.

Support-fee proxy

1.9% of modeled Direct Costs, where Direct Costs equal Sales minus Gross Profit. The exact fee base—temporary gross payroll plus Full-Time Placement Sales—is not disclosed in Item 19, so this is a simplifying proxy.

Required marketing

0.25% of Sales for the Marketing Fund, as disclosed in Item 6. The franchisor states that it matches the contribution.

Local payroll

One sales employee and one recruiter, consistent with Item 7’s General Staffing staffing context, using BLS wage proxies and a private-industry benefit load.

Owner role

The owner-operator case assumes the Managing Owner performs day-to-day management. The manager-run case adds a paid general manager but still does not represent passive ownership.

• Recruiter wage: $58,650, the May 2024 BLS median for Human Resources Specialists in employment services.
• Sales wage proxy: $66,780, the May 2024 BLS median for nontechnical wholesale and manufacturing sales representatives; staffing sales compensation can differ.
• Manager wage: $102,950, the May 2024 BLS median for General and Operations Managers.
• Benefits load: wages are divided by 70.1%, reflecting BLS December 2025 private-industry wages as 70.1% of total compensation.
• Occupancy: $30,000 in the base case, from the FDD’s estimate of about 1,500 square feet at $20 per square foot annually; conservative and upside cases vary this by 10%.
• Core technology: $7,620 annually for three modeled users of CRM, full-access candidate management, and phone licenses. Other software and usage charges may apply.
• Other local overhead reserve: 10%, 8%, and 6% of Gross Profit for the conservative, base, and upside cases. This is an editorial sensitivity for insurance, local advertising beyond the fund, utilities, professional fees, travel, repairs, and bad debt—not a published Spherion or government margin.

The modeled owner-operator benefit is approximately $103,000, $226,000, and $355,000 across the three scenarios. These are independent estimates for annual operations anchored to the FY2025 all-franchisee median—not forecasts, probabilities, or franchisor-reported owner income.

The scenarios use full-precision calculations and display rounded results. “Owner-operator benefit” includes the value of management labor performed by the owner. “Manager-run residual” treats a paid manager as an operating expense.

In the base scenario, the official $828,347 median Gross Profit becomes about $580,000 of franchisee commission and approximately $226,000 of owner-operator benefit after modeled recurring fees and local operating expenses. This is a derived bridge for the FY2025 General Staffing population, not a reported Spherion profit statement.

Owner involvement changes the modeled annual result by roughly $132,000–$162,000 because the owner-operator case substitutes the owner’s labor for a paid general manager. This estimate applies to the same FY2025 General Staffing anchor and uses a BLS manager wage plus a private-industry benefit load; it is labor value, not passive business profit.

Item 15 says the Managing Owner generally must devote full time and best efforts to day-to-day management. If Spherion permits less than full-time involvement, the Managing Owner must remain actively involved and hire, at minimum, a full-time day-to-day manager, a full-time sales employee, and a full-time recruiter. Either the Managing Owner or hired manager must provide in-person supervision. Therefore, “manager-run” should not be interpreted as absentee or passive ownership.

The largest unresolved uncertainty is the actual local operating-expense structure behind each reporting franchisee. Item 19 is official for FY2025 Sales and Gross Profit, but the owner-earnings range is uncertain because the FDD does not disclose salaries, rent, marketing, bad debt, manager compensation, interest, or net income for the 57-franchisee population.

• Portfolio aggregation: Item 19 combines multiple Franchise Agreements and multiple offices for a franchisee, so the median cannot be treated automatically as a single-office figure.
• Professional Services mix: many reporting franchisees held a Professional Services Addendum, which can add revenue and Gross Profit but may require an additional full-time professional-services employee.
• Survivorship and maturity: six partial-year franchisees and franchisees that ceased operations during 2025 were excluded. The population also includes mature offices and acquired/resale offices.
• Fee-base approximation: Item 19 does not separate temporary gross payroll or Full-Time Placement Sales, so the model cannot reproduce the Franchise Support Fee exactly.
• Local compensation: staffing sales, recruiting, and management pay vary by geography, incentives, experience, and labor-market conditions. BLS national medians are benchmarks, not Spherion payroll data.
• Credit and risk costs: receivables over 60 days can trigger a funding fee, uncollectible billings can be deducted, and workers’ compensation or liability experience can reduce Gross Profit or commission.
• Item 20 mismatch: the 180 franchised outlets at year-end 2025 include traditional, Area-Based, and On-Premise locations. That outlet count is not the denominator for Item 19’s 57 reporting franchisees.
• No company-operated proxy: Item 20 reports zero company-owned Spherion outlets at year-end 2025, so there is no same-brand company-store operating margin to validate the scenario.

A buyer should verify the exact Item 19 population, request written substantiation, and rebuild the scenario using local payroll, office count, service mix, and actual fee bases. The official evidence covers FY2025 General Staffing franchisees; every owner-earnings figure beyond Gross Profit remains derived or estimated.

• Request Item 19 written substantiation and confirm how many offices and Franchise Agreements are represented by the median franchisee.
• Ask current and former franchisees for normalized profit-and-loss statements that separate Sales, Direct Costs, Gross Profit, franchisee commission, Franchise Support Fee, Marketing Fund, local payroll, occupancy, bad debt, interest, and owner compensation.
• Confirm whether the business has a Professional Services Addendum and identify the incremental staffing expense and revenue contribution.
• Determine the owner’s expected weekly duties and compare an owner-operated structure with the cost of a qualified day-to-day manager.
• Recalculate wages and benefits using the target market rather than national medians, including commissions and bonuses for sales staff.
• Model receivable aging, uncollectible accounts, workers’ compensation allocations, insurance deductibles, and the Gross Profit Quota Shortfall Fee.
• Run debt service separately using the buyer’s actual financed amount, rate, term, and fees. Do not convert pre-tax operating earnings into after-tax take-home pay without individualized tax advice.

The strongest defensible range is approximately $100,000–$355,000 of annual pre-tax owner-operator benefit, with a $226,000 base scenario; it is scenario-based, not an official Spherion earnings disclosure. A manager-run structure has a much weaker modeled range of approximately −$58,000 to $223,000 because management payroll absorbs a large share of the residual.