In this week’s StaffingHub Brief, we’re covering:
- Staffing hours reached a new 2026 high, with industrial up 17% YoY and the macro leading indicators turning positive for the first time in over a year.
- Elwood Staffing completed its 22nd acquisition with CoWorx, expanding to 320+ locations in 40 states, while VeloSource secured a minority investment from UPMC to scale its healthcare staffing tech.
- A cyberattack knocked Bullhorn offline for three days, and new research shows AI is speeding up sourcing while making recruiters less confident in what they find.
Industrial is leading the staffing recovery
US staffing hours hit a new year-to-date high in the week ended October 10, with the overall index at 108, up 11% year over year. Industrial reached an index of 100 for the first time since December 2022, up 17% YoY on manufacturing, logistics, and data center demand. IT added 6%. Office and clerical remains the only sector shrinking, still down 7% YoY. (Learn more)
The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index held flat in September at 99.6, but its six-month growth rate turned positive, reversing a 1.1% decline over the prior six months. GDP growth is forecast at 2.2% for 2026. That growth is shifting from consumer spending toward business investment, which tends to pull in contingent and project-based labor. (Learn more)
Randstad beat its Q3 adjusted profit estimate by about 5%, with North America up 9% YoY, and guided to mid-single-digit organic growth in Q4. (Learn more) Robert Half’s talent solutions segment grew roughly 2% in Q3 on an adjusted basis, with adjusted operating income up 19%. Nine-month revenue is still down 2% year over year. (Learn more)
Two deals this week, one for scale and one with a health system
Elwood Staffing Services acquired CoWorx Staffing Services in its 22nd acquisition. CoWorx adds 45 locations across 21 states, five of them new to Elwood and concentrated in the East, pushing the combined footprint to 320+ service locations in 40 states. CoWorx keeps its brand, team, and service model as a wholly owned subsidiary. Both are family-owned companies with histories dating to the 1970s and 1980s. (Learn more)
Healthcare staffing firm VeloSource secured a minority stake from UPMC Enterprises, the venture arm of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The investment funds Syncx, VeloSource’s MSP and ATS platform acquired in June, built for large health systems. Dr. Richard Wadas, a UPMC physician executive, joins VeloSource’s board as chief medical officer while keeping his UPMC role. UPMC has been a client since 2017. (Learn more) Healthcare is projected to account for 37% of all new US jobs through 2035. Agencies without a healthcare vertical are watching the largest growth segment in the market build its own infrastructure. (Learn more)
Bullhorn went offline, and AI is eroding sourcing confidence
On October 17, Bullhorn confirmed a cyberattack and took its platform offline. The recruitment software provider serves more than 10,000 customers. Agencies lost access to candidate records, job applications, and placements. In some cases, that included the systems used to pay workers. Systems came back online in the US, UK, and Australia by October 19-20, but several products were still degraded. Bullhorn has not confirmed whether customer data was exfiltrated. The investigation is ongoing. (Learn more)
AI is making recruiters faster, but not more confident. A TestGorilla survey of 1,428 US talent professionals found 72% say AI helped them find candidates faster in the past year. Among that group, a third saw no improvement in confidence they’d found the right person, and 18% say their confidence actually fell. Now 67% spend an hour or more manually verifying a single sourced candidate before trusting the result. (Learn more)
AI-generated applications are making the volume problem worse. Enterprise TA teams report spending an average of nine hours a week sifting through low-quality, AI-inflated applications. Seventy-four percent of TA leaders say at least a quarter of applications contain AI-generated content, and 77% have seen an increase in overstated skills. (Learn more)
Deepfake hires are no longer edge cases. Companies including KnowBe4 have publicly disclosed unknowingly hiring AI-generated candidates, and 40% of TA leaders report an increase in fraudulent or identity-fraud applications. If your verification process hasn’t changed since before AI tools went mainstream, it’s probably not keeping up. (Learn more)
