--- title: "What is headcount?" description: "**Canonical URL:** https://jobspipe.dev/answers/what-is-headcount" canonical: https://jobspipe.dev/answers/what-is-headcount last_updated: 2026-09-10 --- # What is headcount? > Headcount is the number of people a company employs at a point in time, counted as individuals regardless of hours or contract type. It is the figure finance plans against, HR reports on and investors read as a proxy for scale. Open headcount is the approved positions not yet filled, which is what job postings expose. **Canonical URL:** https://jobspipe.dev/answers/what-is-headcount **Topic:** Hiring signals (https://jobspipe.dev/hiring-signals-api) Headcount and full-time equivalent, or FTE, answer different questions. Headcount counts people: two half-time employees are two heads. FTE counts hours: the same two employees are one FTE. Budgets and productivity ratios usually run on FTE, while org charts, software seats and most public disclosures run on headcount. Contractors and agency staff are typically outside both, which is why a hiring freeze that bans headcount growth often coincides with more contractor spend. When a company reports headcount, check which definition it used before comparing it with another company's figure. Headcount growth is a buying signal because every added employee consumes seats, devices, cloud, benefits and space, and a team that grows past a threshold buys tooling it did not need before. Open postings are the leading indicator: a posting appears after headcount is approved and before the person starts, so a company's open roles approximate the headcount it plans to add over the next quarter or two. The ratio that matters is open roles to current headcount, since one hire at a small company is a larger relative move than dozens at a large one. The chart below shows how concentrated that growth is: only a minority of hiring companies have ten or more roles open at once, yet those companies account for most of the active postings, so a raw posting count overweights large employers. To read planned headcount for one company, call POST /v1/jobs/search with company_name_or and status set to active and count the rows, adding discovered_at_gte to see what was added recently. min_employee_count and max_employee_count filter by the company's current employee count where it is known, and GET /v1/companies/{key} returns the company record. ## Related questions ### What is the difference between headcount and FTE? Headcount counts people; FTE counts full-time hours. A part-time employee is one head but a fraction of an FTE, so a company with many part-timers has a headcount well above its FTE. Budgets and productivity metrics tend to use FTE, while org charts, seat licenses and public disclosures tend to use headcount. Contractors are usually excluded from both. ### What does headcount mean in business? The number of employees on the payroll at a given date, used to plan budgets, allocate seats and space, and report scale to investors and regulators. It is a stock, not a flow: headcount growth over a period is the difference between two headcounts, net of hires and departures, which is why it can be flat while a company is hiring heavily to replace attrition. ### How do you calculate headcount growth? Take the headcount at the end of the period, subtract the headcount at the start, and divide by the starting headcount for a rate. Because published headcounts lag, the forward-looking version uses open roles divided by current headcount, which posting data supports: count a company's active postings and divide by its employee count where known. ### Does headcount include contractors? Usually not. Most companies count only employees on the payroll, and contractors, agency staff and outsourced teams sit outside the headcount figure even when they do the same work. That gap is why a headcount freeze often shifts spend to contractors rather than stopping it, and why comparing two companies' headcounts needs a check of what each includes. ### What is headcount planning? The budgeting exercise that sets how many people each team may employ over the coming period and when the additions are approved. It is the numeric core of workforce planning and produces the requisitions a recruiting team works from. Open postings are the public trace of an approved headcount plan being executed. ## More answers - [What companies are hiring?](https://jobspipe.dev/answers/what-companies-are-hiring) - [Are tech companies hiring?](https://jobspipe.dev/answers/are-tech-companies-hiring) - [What's workforce planning?](https://jobspipe.dev/answers/what-is-workforce-planning) Data behind these answers is published as shares only; every figure can be reproduced against the JobsPipe API (https://jobspipe.dev/jobs-api). --- AI agents: the full machine-readable index of this site is https://jobspipe.dev/llms.txt?src=md-twin - API quickstart, no-key sandbox (POST https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/sandbox/jobs/search), MCP server, pricing. Free key: https://jobspipe.dev/signup