By Callum Borchers

I could really use an executive assistant right now. Between work and all the kid stuff that comes with a new school year, it's hard to keep the calendar straight and the fridge stocked.

Trouble is, I'm not an executive.

Some regular folks like me have decided not to let titles, or lack thereof, stop them from having EAs. They've hired their own to help manage professional and personal affairs, spending anywhere from $10 a month for an artificial-intelligence assistant to several thousand dollars a month for a part-time person.

They see it as an investment that can pay for itself in increased productivity and earnings, and a testament to the modern habit of overscheduling ourselves and our children.

They also say it's worth every penny and makes them feel like bosses.

This is happening while America's actual bosses are learning to check their own inboxes -- not to mention their egos -- because having an assistant is a rarer perk than it used to be. The ranks of executive assistants plummeted from about 1.4 million in 2000 to 483,570 in 2023, according to federal data, leaving many managers without a coveted status symbol and timesaving aide.

Even though companies are cutting administrative roles and telling all but the most senior executives to fend for themselves, the rest of us can get a taste of the EA experience thanks to the next evolution of virtual assistants. We're all familiar with remote admins that cost-conscious businesses assign to support managers for, say, 20 hours a week. This new brand of EA is marketed directly to rank-and-file workers for as few as five hours a month.

"The workplace is structured so that you have to hit a certain level within the organization to get help, but an assistant doesn't have to be a novelty," says Jess Little, director of operations at Coastal Life Real Estate in Massachusetts.

Her role doesn't come with an EA, so the mother of three got her own.

Talk to my assistant

Little uses an EA service called Sundays that primarily targets working parents with plans that cost $50 to $60 an hour for a human assistant. She started at 10 hours a month and found the help so valuable that she upped it to 25 hours.

She and her EA kick off each week with a video call to go over coming events and tasks -- booking a bounce house for one of the kids' birthday parties, for instance. Little, 35, delegates grocery shopping to her assistant, as well as phone calls to places like the pediatrician's office. Her EA will patch her in if necessary, but Little appreciates saving precious minutes on hold.

Her assistant also helps manage Little's work calendar, orders printed materials for real-estate listings and drafts social-media posts.

There are limits to what someone who isn't employed by your company can do for you at work, she notes. Little's EA can't access the real-estate firm's email or Slack channels. She suggests getting your employer's blessing before bringing in a third party to help with your job.

Others who have hired executive assistants reserve the help for side hustles and personal things.

Stacey Champagne's day job is cybersecurity consulting for a federal contractor that, no surprise, wouldn't be cool with her passing tasks to an outsider. Separately, she is building a professional-development service for women, called Hacker in Heels, and pays for 15 hours of assistance a month.

Her EA sends emails to event speakers and books flights and hotels. The assistant recently helped order flowers for Champagne's sister-in-law, who just had a baby.

Champagne, 33, says having an EA allows her to maintain a semblance of a personal life while juggling a full-time job and a passion project. An assistant who liaises with her clients and their mentors also lends an air of professionalism.

"It does provide some credibility to the brand to show it's not just me tinkering in my basement," she says.

Robo helper

An extra set of hands sounds great, but bad-fit EAs can take more time to train and supervise than they save. Talk about a first-world problem, but Champagne's first assistant was a bust.

Jelynn Malone, chief brand officer of Mostra Coffee in San Diego, has likewise been frustrated by assistants' human errors. Now she uses an artificial-intelligence service called Ohai with plans that cost about $10 to $30 a month.

One of Ohai's top features is creating digital calendar entries out of unstructured data -- an email attachment with a conference itinerary or a photo of that bake-sale flier stuffed in your child's backpack. Malone, 41, finds it more accurate than most people.

She also prompts her AI assistant to create meal plans and order the ingredients through Instacart.

Ohai Chief Executive Sheila Lirio Marcelo says an advantage of the service is a bot never protests that a request isn't in its job description.

"In the 'Mad Men' days, you could assign personal stuff to assistants, but that's not happening as much anymore," she says.

This is because executives who do have assistants increasingly share them with two or three other managers and can only assign work-related tasks.

Having your employer pay for an EA still sounds pretty nice. But the upside of footing the bill yourself is more control over your assistant's time and, in turn, your own time, too.

Write to Callum Borchers at callum.borchers@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 10, 2025 21:00 ET (01:00 GMT)

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