An accurate figure for the scale of your addressable market is a critically important data point for effective management. Staffing Industry Analysts’ estimates for the size and growth rate of the IT temporary staffing market in the US, which extend back to 1997, have come to be relied upon by industry stakeholders for strategic planning and benchmarking purposes. Of course, further granularity to the data is always helpful. And with more firms looking to expand beyond US borders, market size estimates by skill segment for the other major staffing markets around the world take on added importance. Here, we provide an initial look at two recently published reports that help fill in these blanks.
Based on data collected in our 2015 North American Staffing Company Survey, the first report explores the distribution of staffing revenue by skill set and client vertical. It may not surprise you to learn that IT was one of the most specialized of the 10 temporary staffing skill segments analyzed. Among firms that reported generating any temporary staffing revenue in the IT segment, 48% of those said that IT constituted a majority of their temporary staffing revenue.
In addition to the 10 skill segments, the survey also asked participants to break out their revenue among 16 client industry verticals. A cross-distribution of revenue by skill set and client industry based on the responses to these two items was developed and rebalanced according to our 2015 US staffing market size estimates. While they should be considered ballpark estimates rather than definitive figures, the results were generally consistent with our expectations. Rounding figures to the nearest billion dollars, the $27B U.S. market for IT temporary staffing in 2015 comprised primarily customers in the technology/telecom ($6B), finance/insurance ($5B) and business services ($3B) industries.
Stepping back to take a broader perspective, The Global Staffing Industry 2015 offers our most detailed estimate of the worldwide market for staffing services. The US is the biggest single market by a wide margin, with about one-third of the $411B in 2015 global staffing revenue (temporary staffing along with place & search), but Europe remains the largest region. Focusing purely on temporary staffing, IT makes up $51.9B of the $360.9B global market, or 14.4%. North America ($29.0B), Europe ($11.1B) and Asia Pacific ($9.5B) constitute the vast majority, with Africa & Middle East and Latin America adding to the total more modestly.
Stay tuned for the next update to our US staffing industry forecast, due in April. Not only will we provide our latest thoughts on the industry’s growth prospects along with our revised estimates for 2015 and 2016, we will introduce our preliminary projections for 2017 as well. Considering the more complex global macroeconomic picture today relative to that of our last update in September 2015, this may well turn out to be among the more significant — and eagerly anticipated — forecast revisions we have issued in recent years.
