Does anyone know where the most recent SR4 rules for hiring NPCs are, and do those cover hiring mages of varying degrees of power and talent?

To wit, I'm pretty sure that a mage who has Magic 6, Spellcasting 6, and knows dozens of spells charges much more than a mage who has Magic 2, Spellcasting 2, and knows maybe half a dozen spells.

I don't know of any official SR4 rules for hiring NPCs, nor guidelines for prices.

A separate question is what are you hiring them for. Task / risk / duration are all going to inform the price.

But, yes, I would agree that a Professional Rating 6 mage is going to cost substantially more than a PR2 mage.

In this case, for something entirely legit. So actually hiring shadowrunner (read criminal) mages would be problematic.

No risk, safe location, 1 day duration. Just need some extra hands for cooperative spellcasting, which has multiple components/tasks/phases.

I have a very ambitious idea I'm writing up in a new topic, hopefully to be posted here this week.

casting a ward was 100 or 200 ¥ per Hour Work(in 4A)......

HougH!
Medicineman

Except if the second mage has Charisma 9 and Negotiation 7 (not to mention the Influence spell)
It will also depend on the spells themselves, the legality, the difficulty to find a mage who knows them, etc. A rating 6 Healthy Glow will probably be available cheaper than a rating 2 Mind Probe.
And as usual in the shadows it will also depend at how discreet you want it to be and how high the risk is (and what leverage each parties has on the other).

So I'd rather focus on the service itself than the rating of the mage.

One run the Characters crafted in one of our games was entertaining in this regard.

We had a Construction Mage (Lots of Clean and Shape Spells) and a burning need for raw materials. So, we created a small (One-Shot, since this is not BusinessRun) start-up business in Seattle that specialised in construction cleanup and land purification. Then we went on a media campaign blitz that eventually targetd the old Navy Yards across the Sound (Bremerton I believe it is), which was our main cleanup target that we had identified had the resources we were looking for. We went on Interviews and various meet and greets with the Appropriate personnel and then eventually obtained a small "viability" contract to determine the feasability of the work. We did not charge all that much for this trial of our capabilities, cheap enough that it was a no brainer to hire us, but not so cheap it raised questions). I believe we charged enough to cover the equipment we rented (Large Cargo Barge (Dry and wet capabilities) with crane) and our time (for the 1 week period, I believe we charged about 50,000 Nuyen, 15,000 of which was rental fees). Then we busted our asses while the Military personnel evaluated our work. Of course, when the various factions realized that it was a media gold moment (It is NAN Affiliated, and the land was being cleaned up, so kudos from the NAN, even thoguh they appropriated the idea and ran with it) and that they could make a lot of money through application of the right spells and a few mages, well, we knew that the contract would not be renewed; but that was okay, because we had gotten what we came for (Lots of raw matrerials that we could process (about 2,000,000 in materials, that we used and did not sell - did not want to make enemies of the Corps by dumping the materials on the market, and we had a use for them anyway) and the intact hull of a small, old, riverine patrol boat (Our primary targeted acquisition) that we could refurbish and refit).

In the end, it worked out well for us, since we managed to utilize the materials for the team (Love the idea of a construction mage) and made a small section of the world a little brighter (gained some kudos and contacts from the NAN for our cleanup efforts). And fun was had by all... After which we went back to shooting people in the face for money.

Oh man, this takes me back to a game a friend of mine ran where he set up an "impossible" scenario for us to extract a guy from a corp.

We ended up paying a good third of the payout money to a cabal of mages to use Suggestion on the target so he'd actually end up in a part of the building we could get to.

Jokes were tossed around about paying someone else to do the job we were hired to do.

I think Medicineman's guidelines are good.

I wouldn't go below ¥500, even if the work is fairly easy and routine. If it's more labor-intensive and might involve some drain, then ¥1,000. If the magician is going to be flat with drain at the end of a long, hard day, or if the tasks are highly specialized so that few magicians could competently perform them, then maybe pushing ¥2,000.

Look forward to seeing the ambitious idea.

Keep in mind this sort of business already exists. Wage Mages provide services not just for corps, but for individual customers that can pay enough. I would not be surprised if there were companies specializing in such magical services, which means the cost could go up, but at the benefit of the company being responsible for the magic being handled a proper way, and that the customer are not being mind/raped into giving all his money. Mages are both distrusted and potentially extremely dangerous, so using established businesses makes complete sense. Hiring one illegally would be something else - possibly cheaper, but more risk.