As 2026 gets underway, staffing leaders are asking familiar questions with renewed urgency: Are job orders picking up? Where is demand actually holding? How hard is it to fill the roles that are open?

Bullhorn Insights’ latest hiring outlook offers clear, data-backed answers. By tracking key indicators across permanent and temporary hiring, Bullhorn’s proprietary data shows how employers are behaving beneath the surface.

The headline this month: permanent hiring is steady but cautious, while temporary recruitment is showing more encouraging signs of momentum.

Let’s break down what the data tells us, and what it means for staffing strategy heading into the first quarter.

Permanent hiring: Activity rises seasonally, caution remains

January typically brings a bounce in permanent job orders as hiring managers return from the holidays, budgets reopen, and delayed decisions finally move forward. This year followed that familiar pattern. Permanent job orders increased month-over-month, reflecting the usual seasonal reset.

But zooming out tells a more restrained story. Permanent jobs per recruiter remain down 5% year-over-year, signaling that while activity has resumed, it hasn’t meaningfully accelerated. Employers are opening roles, but they’re doing so selectively, often prioritizing must-have hires over broader headcount expansion.

Fill rates offer additional context. After a strong surge in the fall of 2025, permanent fill rates have stabilized at elevated levels. In fact, they remain substantially higher than they were two to three years ago. This suggests that when employers do open permanent roles, they’re motivated to fill them — and recruiters are doing so efficiently.

What’s missing is volume. The data doesn’t yet show the kind of sustained increase in permanent job activity that would indicate a true recovery. Instead, it points to a market where critical roles are being filled without a corresponding spike in recruiter effort or pipeline growth.

For staffing leaders, this reinforces a key reality: permanent hiring is not stalled, but it is deliberate. Employers are taking fewer risks, scrutinizing hires more closely, and moving forward only when the business case is clear.

Temporary hiring: Momentum builds as flexibility wins

Temporary recruitment tells a more optimistic story as 2026 begins. Temporary job orders are up slightly compared to January of last year, and even more meaningfully higher than January 2024. That year-over-year growth matters, especially in a market where many indicators remain flat or mixed.

Even more compelling is what’s happening with fill rates. Temporary job fill rates are up 3% year-over-year and have been trending upward for the past three years. Temp continues to outperform permanent on this metric, highlighting how quickly these roles are being filled once opened.

Just as important: recruiter effort is largely stable. Despite higher fill rates and modest growth in job orders, recruiters are not having to work significantly harder to deliver results. Submissions per job remain steady, indicating that employers are filling temporary roles faster and with the same, or less, effort than earlier in the year.

Together, these signals point to growing employer confidence in contingent labor. In an environment defined by economic uncertainty and long-term planning hesitancy, temporary hiring offers flexibility, speed, and lower perceived risk.

What fill rates and effort reveal about employer behavior

Looking across both permanent and temporary hiring, one theme stands out: efficiency remains high.

Higher fill rates paired with stable recruiter effort suggest that staffing firms have become more effective at matching the right candidates to the right roles. This is likely driven by a combination of better data, improved workflows, and growing adoption of automation and AI-powered tools across the recruitment lifecycle.

From resume parsing and matching to automated outreach and scheduling, technology is helping recruiters focus their time where it matters most. As a result, even in a slower-growth environment, placements are happening efficiently.

For employers, this efficiency reinforces cautious confidence. They may not be opening roles aggressively, but when they do, they expect speed, precision, and results. 

The bottom line

The latest hiring outlook paints a picture of a market that is steady, selective, and quietly recalibrating.

Permanent hiring is moving forward with caution, while temporary recruitment is gaining traction as employers prioritize flexibility and speed. Fill rates remain strong, recruiter effort is stable, and efficiency continues to separate high-performing firms from the rest.

For staffing leaders, the opportunity is about acting on the signals that are already there instead of waiting for broad recovery. By leaning into the momentum, optimizing operations, and using real-time data to guide decisions, firms can turn a measured start to the year into meaningful progress.

Check back with Bullhorn Insights at the start of every month for the latest hiring outlook and the insights you need to stay ahead of the market.