pay up! flickr: Andres Rueda

Small and midsize companies pay more than $1500 more per hire than large businesses, the Wall Street Journal reports today.

While it’s not super surprising that large businesses pay less per hire (after all, they hire so many more people!), we were a little surprised by the actual numbers: $1,949 per hire for a large company, versus $3,632 at medium firms and $3,665 at small firms.

The data comes from a new survey by HR advisory firm Bersin & Associates. The survey also noted that this recruitment cost is three times as much as the company spends on training those employees once hired.