Staffing and Human Resources Consulting

There are about 19,754 staffing and recruitment companies in the United States, according to the research group IBISWorld. These range from solo practitioners to multinational corporations. Opportunities are available throughout the United States and abroad.

Staffing and recruiting agencies provide temporary, contract, and permanent workers to companies, government agencies, nonprofits, and other organizations. They offer a wide array of employment services, including contract and temporary staffing, outsourcing and outplacement, recruiting and permanent placement, training, and human resources consulting.

There are several types of staffing and personnel management firms. Temporary staffing agencies, also known as temporary help services, comprise more than half of the staffing agencies in the United States, and these firms employ a large percentage of industry workers. These agencies hire employees and assign them to a client’s workforce to address situations such as temporary skill shortages, special projects, or employee absences.

Employment placement agencies list employer vacancies and place permanent employees with companies. These firms typically have small permanent staffs (usually 10 or fewer workers).

Niche recruiting agencies focus on finding skilled candidates in one or a few industries, such as health care or law, or they may specialize in providing recruiting services in a specific geographic area. Niche recruiting agencies are often members of professional associations such as the National Association for Healthcare Recruitment, National Association of Legal Search Consultants, and the National Insurance Recruiters Association.

According to a report by the Staffing Industry Analysts, the five largest U.S. staffing firms in 2024 were Allegis Group (representing 5.3 percent market share), Aya Healthcare (4.7 percent market share), Randstad Holding (2.4 percent market share), Express Employment Professionals (2.1 percent), and Insight Global (2.0 percent). Of the largest U.S. staffing firms included in the SIA report, approximately 23 firms had corporate headquarters in California and Georgia. Florida was home to 21 staffing firms, and New Jersey was home to 20 staffing firms.

The number of online staffing/recruiting agencies and employment Web sites and social media sites (such as LinkedIn, CareerBuilder, and Simply Hired) has grown rapidly in the last decade. These firms often operate without employment counselors and have fewer administrative workers than traditional staffing/recruiting firms. Companies are finding that by using LinkedIn for recruitment, they can bypass recruiting agencies completely or at least to some extent—which allows them to significantly reduce recruiting costs.

Executive recruiting firms, which are also known as headhunters and retained search firms, are hired by businesses and other organizations to locate, research, and interview candidates for hard-to-fill employment positions, mainly at the junior and senior management levels. Executive recruiters at these firms are paid by clients on a commission or flat-fee basis. The executive recruiting industry is not known for employing a large number of workers. Industry leader Korn Ferry, for example, has more than 100 offices worldwide, but only 7,500 workers. Leading executive search firms in the U.S. include Korn Ferry, Spencer Stuart, Egon Zehnder, Russell Reynolds Associates, Heidrick & Struggles, Boyden, and Diversified Search, among others.

Personnel consulting firms provide advice and management to companies and other organizations regarding staffing needs; human resources and personnel policies, procedures, and practices; wage and salary administration; employee benefits planning and administration; and compensation systems planning. The professional employer organization (PEO) area of this industry is growing rapidly. The National Association of Professional Employer Organizations estimates that, as of 2022 (the most recent data available), there were about 523 PEOs operating in the United States. About 208,000 small- and mid-sized businesses and approximately 4.5 million people are part of PEO arrangements.

Popular permanent staff positions in the staffing and personnel management industry include employment, recruitment, and placement specialists and consultants; sales workers; job analysts; employer liaisons; and managers. There were nearly 933,700 human resources specialists (categorized as those who screen, recruit, interview, and place employees) working in the employment services industry in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). The number of human resources specialists is probably much higher because the DOL does not include the owners of small staffing and recruiting agencies when compiling these statistics.

The DOL reports that approximately 16 percent of human resources specialists work for employment services, 14 percent work for professional, scientific, and technical services, 10 percent work for health care and social assistance organizations, 9 percent for government agencies, and 7 percent work for manufacturing companies.