Staffing Industry Analysts recently published an update to its Global Staffing Industry Market Estimates and Forecast. As you may have gleaned from the title, it provides revenue estimates and forecasts for the global staffing market, which we estimate at $428 billion for 2016. Of this amount, $382 billion is associated with temporary staffing (the rest being from “perm” placement and search). Most relevant for IT staffing firms is that the report estimates $59 billion of global temporary staffing revenue is associated with the IT segment.
As shown in Figure 1, IT is the third-largest category in terms of temporary staffing revenue, and easily the largest professional category on a global basis. As shown in Figure 2, IT makes up 36% of global professional temporary staffing revenue. While on a global basis IT might not have quite the presence it does in the US (where it is the second-largest occupational segment and on pace to surpass industrial as the largest in a few years), other regions are clearly open for business when it comes to many IT specialties.
Figure 1: Temporary staffing revenue by occupational segment ($ billions)
Figure 2: Skill segment mix (Commercial and Professional Staffing in $ billions)
