One of the frustrating things about working for a public staffing company is the metrics behind your billing rate.
Gross Profit Margin is the name its given in most places, and it's the percentage of the billing rate that the staffing company collects as profit after paying the contractor's salary, taxes, Social Security, Medicare, Insurance, and Expenses, but before commissions are paid out to the recruiter and salesperson.
Gross Profit Margin is a loathsome master, because it prevents you from taking into account the individual worth of a contractor, and instead focuses on percentages, reducing each contractor to a number.
When you're working for a firm that totals in the hundreds of millions of dollars, some measure is required to keep profits in line. But is GPM the right measure?