Recruitment agency trends for 2027: what the published data shows

The American Staffing Association’s (ASA) survey shows US staffing back to year-over-year growth in the second quarter of 2026, and the forecast from Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) expects modest growth in 2027. ASA reports gains in employment, sales and payroll for that quarter, and says they mark the first year-to-year growth its survey has recorded since late 2022, with total staffing revenue 3.3% above the second quarter of 2025. SIA projects 2.4% growth for the US staffing market in 2026, to $183.1 billion, and forecasts a further 2.2% in 2027. The UK picture is mixed. KPMG and REC report that permanent placements rose in September at the strongest rate in four years, though only marginally, while temp billings grew at the slowest pace in five months.

This page is for owners and managers of recruitment and staffing agencies, and for the in-house leaders who buy from them. Figures are as of October 28, 2026. Each table row names the period and the group the figure covers, and the date of the next release where the publisher states one. The tables keep temporary and permanent measures apart, and a later section lists what the public sources opened for this page do not show, which is agency fee rates and margins, and agency AI use. Official hiring statistics are on Recruiting Trends 2027, and executive search figures are on Executive Search Trends 2027.

US staffing is growing again and the forecast is modest

SIA’s numbers are forecasts, and ASA’s numbers are survey results. ASA’s first-quarter release has sales 1.6% below Q1 2025, and its second-quarter release has total staffing revenue 3.3% above Q2 2025. ASA’s releases use both “sales” and “revenue”. One down quarter and one up quarter neither confirm nor contradict SIA’s full-year 2.4%. The two series also cover different things, since SIA sizes the whole US market and ASA reports what its survey collected, so we do not subtract one from the other. ASA’s third-quarter data, due December 17, 2026, is the next test of whether the second-quarter turn held.

The index’s weekly readings move faster. Staffing jobs were 3.3% above a year earlier in the week of September 7 to 13, down from 7.2% the week before. A swing of that size in seven days is a reason to read the index as a trend line over a month or more. By the October 27 report the year-over-year figure was 2.4%, and some staffing companies attributed that week’s dip to the October 12 holiday.

BLS shows much less year-over-year growth in temporary staffing than ASA’s index does, when the four weeks ending September 13 are set against September as a whole. ASA put temporary and contract staffing employment 5.8% above a year earlier for the four weeks ending September 13. BLS has seasonally adjusted temporary help services employment 0.6% above September 2025, in preliminary data. Both are positive, so temporary staffing was growing year over year in September 2026 on each measure. The pages we read do not explain a gap of that size. We show the two side by side and do not average them.

UK permanent placements edge up while temp growth slows

KPMG and REC survey a panel of around 400 UK recruitment and employment consultancies, so their report reads agencies directly. Survey responses are collected in the second half of each month. KPMG’s Jon Holt says in the release that this remains a fragile recovery.

Three lines of the same release pull in different directions. Permanent placements rose and candidate availability kept increasing, yet overall demand for workers fell again. With candidates plentiful and vacancies falling, we read client vacancies as the tighter constraint for permanent desks, although the release also reports the first improvement in demand for permanent private sector staff for over two years. We would spend more of 2027 business-development time winning a share of those vacancies, and less on widening candidate sourcing.

The regional figures come from different measures, and we do not merge them. In the KPMG and REC release the South of England was the only monitored English region with lower permanent placements. APSCo and Vacancysoft forecast professional vacancies in the South up 6.5% in 2026 and technology vacancies up 30.4%. One counts placements made by consultancies and the other forecasts vacancies, and the pages do not say that both define the South the same way.

National averages hide the split by location. APSCo and Vacancysoft forecast UK marketing recruitment to rise just 0.5% in 2026. In January to August, marketing vacancies were 4% lower than a year earlier, with London up 1.6% while the rest of the country fell 10.8%. A marketing desk in London and one anywhere else faced different markets in January to August. Set 2027 targets desk by desk, using vacancy data for that sector and region, and treat the national headline as background.

Temp and permanent desks need different plans

In the UK, temp billings kept expanding at the slowest pace in five months while permanent placements rose at the strongest rate in four years, though only marginally, so the two desks are moving at different speeds. ASA reports that US temporary and contract payroll rose 3.8% on a year earlier in the second quarter. The ASA releases we read give no permanent placement or direct hire figure, although the survey page lists Search and Placement among its 12 sectors.

A temp desk pays its workers before its clients pay the invoice, so each added temp ties up cash until the invoice is settled. Payroll goes out on Friday while the client’s invoice sits in an approval queue, and a desk growing quickly can run short of cash while its profit and loss looks healthy. A shift between the temp and permanent desks changes the funding need. Work out the weekly temp payroll and the days between paying it and collecting it from your largest clients, and confirm the funding line covers that gap before you agree growth targets for the temp desk.

Fee pressure is the part of agency economics that the sources used here leave unmeasured. KPMG and REC report that permanent salary growth slowed in September for the first time in four months. Permanent fees are commonly a percentage of first-year salary, so slower salary growth means the average fee per placement rises more slowly, other things equal, even though salaries are still rising.

Acceptance rate is the number to show clients

Gartner’s press release of July 31, 2025 reports that 51% of candidates accepted a job offer in their most recent application process (2Q25), which Gartner calls a substantial decline from 74% in 2Q23. The release names no countries and gives no sample size for either figure. It does not say whether the 51% is out of all surveyed candidates or only those who received an offer, and the 2Q25 result is now over a year old. It describes candidates in general, so it is not an agency statistic. Recruiting Trends 2027 covers more of that release.

Say a candidate accepts on Friday and goes quiet by Monday. An agency that can show how often that happens on its desks has a better answer to a fee query than one that cannot. Our view is that 2027 pitches should move from “we find people” to “we get offers accepted”. Report offers made and accepted for each desk, and the starts that follow, and put those next to the fee percentage in your proposals.

What we could not confirm

• A global market size and a 2027 global forecast. SIA’s global staffing estimates page was members-only and showed no figures when it was read on October 26, 2026. SIA’s webinar listing, reopened on October 28, shows a global forecast webinar titled “Global Staffing Market Forecasts: What to Expect in 2027” on Wednesday, November 4, 2026 at 10:00 EST, with a listed duration of one hour. The listing says SIA’s Staffing Industry Report webinars are part of its corporate membership and that members log in to register, so the webinar is members only. On October 28 we opened the World Employment Confederation home page and its resources page. Neither showed a market figure, and the resource list on the resources page did not load. No global figure appeared in the pages opened for this page, so the only 2027 number here is SIA’s US forecast.
• Fee rates and margins. We checked the KPMG and REC release, ASA’s second-quarter release and October index post, and SIA’s US forecast page for fees and margins and found none. We also opened the home pages of REC and the World Employment Confederation on October 28, and neither printed a fee rate or margin.
• AI use by agencies. The same four pages show no figure on how many agencies use AI or what it saves them. SIA’s forecast page lists a related article headline on AI for staffing leaders, and shows no figure from it. REC’s page “Using AI in the recruitment sector”, opened on October 28, prints no figure on how many agencies use AI or what it saves them, and shows no page date. It links to an industry status report labeled 2023/24 that it says includes figures on AI in recruitment, which we did not open.
• KPMG and REC index values. The release text describes direction in words and gives no index readings. REC’s Report on Jobs page, opened on October 28, lists the September 2026 report, gives no numeric index values in its text and prints no date for the next report. Index readings and the date of the next report are therefore unconfirmed.
• APSCo and Vacancysoft detail. Both full reports are members-only. We read the published summaries. They carry 2026 forecasts and no 2027 figures.
• A UK market forecast for 2027. The KPMG and REC release reports September survey results, and the APSCo summaries carry 2026 forecasts, so no UK 2027 market forecast turned up in the pages opened.
• US permanent placement. The ASA releases and SIA’s public summary give no direct hire or search figure.

Using this in your 2027 plan

If you run an agency:

1. Run a flat case and a growth case at SIA’s 2.2% forecast for US revenue, and keep both until ASA’s third-quarter data arrives on December 17, 2026.
2. Set desk targets from sector and region data for that desk. The APSCo marketing split shows a national average can hide a double-digit fall in the rest of the UK from January to August.
3. Check how much cash your temp book needs each week before you commit to temp growth.
4. Track offer acceptance and start rates by desk so that you can quote your own numbers to clients.
5. Put two dates in the calendar: BLS’s October employment data on November 6 and ASA’s third-quarter survey on December 17.

If you buy agency services:

1. Ask each agency for its offer acceptance and start rates, by desk where it can give them.
2. Ask how any AI screening step works, and check AI Hiring Laws 2027: Dates by Jurisdiction for the places where your candidates live and work.
3. Read the in-house side of the same trends in Talent Acquisition Trends 2027 before you decide which roles go to an agency.

Your next step is to draft two versions of your 2027 plan in the Recruiting Plan Template 2027, one flat and one with growth near SIA’s 2.2% forecast for US staffing, and rerun both after ASA publishes its third-quarter data on December 17, 2026.

Written and reviewed by the HR Riant Editorial Team. General information, not legal advice.