Following the close of the first half of 2026, SIA and Bullhorn are implementing technical and benchmarking updates to the SIA | Bullhorn Staffing Indicator. To allow for this upgrade, the Indicator will not be published this week. Publication will resume next Tuesday, July 14.

These enhancements are part of our ongoing commitment to strengthening the Indicator as a timely, trusted resource for staffing and solutions companies, buyers and the wider workforce solutions ecosystem.

In the meantime, for our latest data on the global staffing market, we recommend that you check out our latest Hiring outlook.

SIA | Bullhorn research

Commercial hours now -4% below 2025

IT hours dip below 2025 levels for first time since January

Light industrial hours -2% below 2025

Office/clerical hours continue to decline

Staffing Industry Analysts’ perspective

US Staffing hours were down -2% compared to a year ago in the week ending June 20th. Commercial hours were down -4% y/y while Professional hours were stable y/y. On a skill segment level, Industrial occupation hours were down -2% y/y, IT occupation hours were down -1% y/y, and Office/Clerical hours were down -14% y/y.

We note that staffing hours broadly declined due to the impact of the Juneteenth federal holiday on June 19th. With the Juneteenth holiday falling on a Friday this year, along with evidence that adoption of the holiday continues to grow, we believe the impact of holiday-related business closures were more significant this year than last year and help explain the year-over-year decline in hours worked.

Looking at the trend of the five and a half months so far this year, both Commercial and Professional staffing hours have pulled back from the robust peak levels reached in May. While IT and Office/Clerical staffing hours showed a decent bounce back from the usual Memorial Day week dip, Industrial staffing hours have stayed down so far in June. We will be looking to next week’s data release for more insight on whether this signals a lasting pullback from the strong momentum that Industrial staffing volumes have built in the first half of this year.

Prior to the Memorial Day holiday week, the positive sequential growth trend was consistent with data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’s June 2026 US Jobs Report that showed five straight months of growth in Temporary Help Services employment.

Average weekly hours worked per worker dropped to 34.8 hours during the week of Juneteenth. On average, Industrial occupations worked 37.2 hours (close to their year-to-date high) while IT occupations averaged 36.0 hours.

We believe industrial staffing has benefitted this year from demand from clients in manufacturing and logistics, as well as demand related to investment in data centers. Demand for professional staffing has come from clients moving forward on projects that had previously been paused as well as from new projects related to AI readiness and transformation. According to the latest BLS estimates, US temporary help employment grew sequentially in each month from January through May, breaking the pattern of sequential declines that characterized the period from 2023 to 2025. For more US staffing industry insights, please see our US Staffing Industry Forecast: March 2026 Update, our US Economic and Labor Market Trends (May 2026), and our June 2026 US Jobs Report.

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 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 staffing firms, it does represent a sizable sample of the 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.

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