Staffing hours enter the year higher than January 2025
Hours were up across the board in the first full work week of the year. All segments saw double-digit growth as hours recovered after the typical holiday decline. This is the first time since 2023 that hours have started the year up against the prior year.
IT Staffing Indicator
IT staffing hours begin the year even with 2025
Commentary for the week ending January 10, 2026
- The IT indicator improved from 80 to 101, even with where hours were the same week in 2025.
- IT hours increased 26.6% compared to the previous week as workers returned from the holidays.
Staffing Industry Analysts’ perspective
US Staffing hours were up 1% compared to the same week a year ago. This marks the first positive year-over-year growth reading since November 2024. Similarly, the IT Staffing Indicator was flat year-over-year. While we caution that year-over-year readings for the first week in January are inherently volatile, the positive measures are nonetheless a welcome sign for an industry that has been in contraction for more than three years.
Looking back at the year 2025, the median year-over-year change was -4% for US Staffing Indicator values. The interactive chart’s 12-month view shows that the gap between 2024 and 2025 levels narrowed slightly during the course of the past 12 months.
On a sequential, week-over-week basis, hours dropped sharply as expected during the holiday season. Over the weeks leading to Thanksgiving, hours were edging up in the tail end of the seasonal ramp that typically kicks off after Labor Day. Both Commercial hours and Professional hours had reached new Year-To-Date peak levels.
The outlook for temporary staffing remains clouded by factors such as slowing growth in the overall US labor market, moderately high interest rates, policy uncertainty, and uncertainty regarding the impact of AI, leading to a continued cautious approach to hiring from clients. Nevertheless, we highlight that elevated levels of uncertainty for staffing clients means a stronger value proposition for the use of a flexible or contingent workforce to help navigate fluctuations in business activity. For more insights, please see our US Economic and Labor Market Trends (November 2025), our January US Jobs Report Briefing and our most recent US Staffing Industry Forecast Update.
About the SIA Bullhorn Staffing Industry Indicator
The SIA | Bullhorn Staffing Indicator is a unique tool for gauging near real time weekly trends in the volume of temporary staffing delivered by US staffing firms. Each week the Indicator reports data for the week that ended ten days prior to the release. It reflects weekly hours worked by temporary workers across a sample of staffing companies in the US that utilize Bullhorn’s technology solutions. The Indicator is weighted and benchmarked against US Bureau of Labor Statistics data to approximate the composition of the staffing industry by skill. While the indicator does not presume to perfectly reflect the entire universe of US staffing firms, it does represent a sizable sample of the US staffing industry, reflecting a wide range of occupations, client industry verticals, and geographic footprint that spans the country.
The Indicator can be used by staffing firms to benchmark their past and current performance, as well as a tool for forecasting near term industry trends and outlook.
As the US temporary staffing industry has often functioned as a co-incident indicator for the US labor market and economy, the SIA | Bullhorn Staffing Indicator is also useful for a broader audience of business leaders and investors who are seeking real-time insight.
The Indicator is a joint custom research effort between Bullhorn and industry advisor Staffing Industry Analysts.
Revisions and Technical notes on the SIA | Bullhorn Staffing Indicator
We note the readings for the last 4 weeks are subject to revision and so should be viewed as preliminary, with the reading for the last recorded week the most likely to be revised in next week’s data release. For further information on how the Indicator has been created and detailed technical notes please refer to the methodology.
