Temp staffing is still a 2.2 million-worker weekly market, and the buyers are changing
The American Staffing Association (ASA) says about 2.2 million temporary and contract employees worked for US staffing companies in an average week in 2024, and staffing provided job and career opportunities for about 11 million employees that year. Staffing Industry Analysts reported ASA elected its 2026 board officers on Oct. 7, 2025, naming LaSalle Network’s Tom Gimbel as chair alongside executives from Allegis Group, Kelly, Adecco Group US Foundation and others. Taken together, the scale numbers and the new board roster point to an industry steering committee that spans industrial, professional, and healthcare staffing, right as enterprise operators are being asked to justify flexible labor programs with clearer performance and compliance metrics. For procurement, HR, and operations leaders, the practical consequence shows up in MSAs and SOWs being renegotiated now: rate structures, conversion and tenure terms, and skills coverage across higher-skilled roles that ASA says make up 40% of staffing assignments.
- 01A useful planning benchmark is ASA’s 2024 weekly average of 2.2 million temp/contract workers, it’s a reality check for how much surge capacity the channel can supply at any given time.
- 02The popular ‘flexibility’ story is often overstated: ASA reports 64% of staffing employees say they use the model to bridge jobs or land a job, versus 20% citing schedule flexibility. That gap should shape retention and conversion assumptions in workforce plans.
- 03ASA’s own fact sheet mixes 2024/2023 workforce figures with 2021 counts of firms and offices, a reminder for buyers to ask suppliers what’s changed in branch footprint, specialization, and delivery model since those baselines.
Sep 2, 2026
