Cost per hire hit $5,475 in 2025, up from roughly $4,700 the year before. Applications per recruiter rose 400% over the same stretch. Staffing firms are spending more to attract candidates most of them never look at.
Only 14.98% of applicants ever reach a screening conversation. More than half of all applications for a role show up in the first 10 days after it posts, then the pipeline goes cold, while most agencies keep sourcing instead of working the pile they already have. And 38.4% of candidates name the same complaint: no one follows up. That complaint doesn’t stay contained to this requisition. It shows up again as a colder, more skeptical applicant pool on the next one.
The real bottleneck is conversion, not volume. Staffing firms already have plenty of applicants. Most of them just never get worked.
A new StaffingHub report, sponsored by Leoforce, digs into where this cost hides, why it’s gotten worse in a soft market, and which agencies are closing the gap instead of feeding it.
