Welcome to this week’s StaffingHub Brief, your strategic intelligence roundup for staffing agency leaders. In this week’s issue:
- US staffing hours rose 4% year over year in the week ended May 2, hitting another year-to-date high, with industrial hours up 9%.
- 84% of C-suite executives expect AI-related regulatory changes in the next year, double last year’s figure.
- The Adecco Group posted 5.3% organic revenue growth in Q1 while GEE Group reported AI is having a “dampening effect” on client hiring plans.
- Physician interest in locum tenens has hit a 10-year high, with 41% having worked locums at some point, up from 20% in 2016.
- Nearly 1 in 4 tech professionals globally have quit a job because their employer failed to provide structured upskilling.
Staffing hours keep climbing, and the leading indicators are following
US staffing hours rose 4% year over year in the week ended May 2, reaching another year-to-date high, according to the SIA | Bullhorn Staffing Indicator. Commercial hours led the gain, up 7% year over year. Industrial hours were the strongest segment, up 9%. Professional staffing grew 2%, and office/clerical remained the weak spot, down 4% year over year. (Learn more)
The Conference Board Employment Trends Index rose to 105.77 in April, up from a revised 105.52 in March, with 7 of 8 components contributing positively. Temporary help services employment contributed positively for the fourth consecutive month. Initial unemployment insurance claims fell to 203,300 in April, near a historic low. The share of consumers who say jobs are “hard to get” dropped 1.5 percentage points to 19.8%, its lowest point since the start of the year. (Learn more)
Why it matters: Temp help is four months into a consistent climb and the broader leading indicators are moving with it, so client hesitation is now the ceiling on your growth, not market conditions.
The industry earnings split is telling a clear story
The Adecco Group reported Q1 2026 organic revenue growth of 5.3%, with total revenue of €5.65 billion beating analyst forecasts of €5.56 billion. North America posted the strongest regional result, up 15% on an organic basis. CEO Denis Machuel pointed directly to agentic AI deployments on the company’s digital platform, citing improvements in fill rates and time-to-fill across new markets. Flexible placement revenue rose 6%; permanent placement fell 7% organically. (Learn more)
GEE Group posted a Q2 2026 net revenue decline of 20.5%, with revenue falling to $19.5 million, as contract staffing revenue dropped 24.2%. CEO Derek Dewan named AI directly, saying it has had a “dampening effect” on hiring plans at many client organizations. The bright spots: direct hire revenue rose 6.2%, gross margin improved from 34.1% to 38.1%, and the firm returned to profitability after a $33.1 million net loss in Q2 2025. (Learn more)
Why it matters: The firms deploying AI in their delivery operations are gaining volume while firms absorbing AI-related client hesitation are losing contract revenue, and the direct hire uptick at GEE Group is an early sign that perm demand may be finding its footing.
AI governance just became your clients’ top compliance priority
84% of C-suite executives expect AI-related policy or regulatory changes in the next year, double the share who said the same last year, according to Littler’s annual survey of approximately 300 C-suite leaders. AI has officially overtaken both immigration and DEI as the top area where employers expect regulatory shifts. Governance is lagging adoption: 68% of organizations have a formal AI policy, nearly double last year’s rate, but just over half have restrictions on what information can be entered into AI tools. (Learn more)
74% of tech professionals say they must upgrade their skills to remain relevant, and nearly 1 in 4 have already quit a job because their employer failed to provide structured upskilling, according to a new global report from Randstad Digital, drawing from research across more than 27,000 individuals and 1,225 employers in 35 markets. In North America, 24% of tech professionals have left roles over a lack of development opportunities. The report describes the core problem as a “Productivity Paradox”: companies are investing in AI platforms faster than they are building the workforce capability to use them, and 52% of tech professionals are now seeking training independently because internal programs cannot keep pace with the rate of change. (Learn more)
Why it matters: Your clients have a compliance exposure they haven’t fully mapped and a readiness gap their own teams can’t close. The staffing firms that show up with workforce capability solutions rather than headcount alone will move into a different kind of client relationship.
Physician interest in locum tenens just hit its highest point in a decade
41% of physicians report having worked locums at some point, double the 20% who said the same in 2016, according to the 2026 Locum Tenens Physicians Report from Weatherby Healthcare, a division of CHG Healthcare. The share actively working locums also doubled, 14% today versus 5% a decade ago. And the channel driving awareness has shifted. More than half of physicians, 56%, were introduced to locums by working alongside locum physicians, and 55% heard about it directly from colleagues or friends. Agency outreach is no longer the first touchpoint. (Learn more)
New survey data from Medical Solutions shows that most clinicians define competitive pay within a core range of $2,000 to $2,999 per week, based on responses from nearly 4,000 nurses and allied professionals. Early-career clinicians tend toward the lower end of that band; late-career clinicians are more likely to expect above $3,000 per week. Travel clinicians prioritize earning potential, while permanent and local clinicians weigh stability and flexibility more heavily. (Learn more)
Why it matters: Physicians are finding locums through peers, not agency outreach, so healthcare staffing firms that build real visibility inside clinical communities will capture the demand this shift is generating before firms still relying on cold contact even know it’s there.
The entry-level market is compressing, and the workforce model is being redesigned around it
A new SIA report finds organizations are shifting from “how many people do we need” to “how should work be allocated across employees, contingent labor, and digital workers.” The research describes a hybrid model where human workers handle complex, judgment-based tasks while rules-based work is increasingly handled by AI agents and robotic process automation bots. Digital workers tend to reshape roles and compress organizational layers rather than eliminate jobs outright. Adoption is still early: many organizations are experimenting with AI agents but have not scaled deployments. (Learn more)
More than 4 in 5 hiring managers say entry-level jobs now require more skills than in the past, and 60% say it is more efficient to use AI for entry-level tasks than to hire and train a candidate, according to a survey by Express Employment Professionals conducted by The Harris Poll among 1,002 U.S. hiring decision-makers. Nearly two-thirds of hiring managers say implementing AI could allow them to reduce workforce size. Recent college graduates ended 2025 with unemployment near 5.7% and underemployment at 42.5%, the highest since 2020. (Learn more)
Why it matters: As clients redesign workflows around digital workers, the shape of contingent demand is changing too, and agencies that understand how work is being reallocated, not just how headcount is shrinking, will be positioned to fill the roles that the hybrid model can’t automate.
The StaffingHub Brief provides weekly insights for staffing agency leaders and publishes every Friday.
