The International Staffing Industry has been growing considerably over the last few years. The 2012 economic report by CIETT (International Confederation of Private Employment Agencies) which was prepared based on data from 43 countries says that the global staffing industry size has reached 10.4 million at the end of 2010. The report omits data from some countries where temp staffing is not legally recognized, the ones who don’t share the data and the countries for which the data was not available. Two significant economies in the world China and India were not covered in the CIETT studies. Refer page number 73 & 74 on ISF Report for more details on Global temporary staffing industry.

The American Staffing industry has estimated the US temporary worker base at 2.5 Million workers in 2010, South Africa and Japan closely follow the US with a temporary staff worker base which is slightly lesser than 1 Million. Japan saw a 30% decrease in the temporary worker base from 1.4 Million in 2008 to 0.96 Million in 2010, and the main reason was said to be economic turmoil in the country during 2009. On the other hand, South Africa has almost seen a 100% increase in flex staff base in the same period from 0.5 Million in 2008 to 0.97 Million in 2010. The number of temporary workers in China in 2008 according to their ministry of human resources was said to be 27 Million, and in India, it was 1.3 Million in 2011. The top 5 countries in terms of temporary worker base in Europe are the UK, Germany, France, Netherland, and Italy.

USA has almost 30% of the share in Global annual sales revenue oftemporary staffing agencies, followed by Japan with 20% and the UK at 9% rounding up the top 3. CIETT did not take the revenue data of India and China, the two major markets in the temporary staffing industry into consideration as the revenue data for these two countries were not published.