Staffing agencies are the essential components to the standard hiring process for not only large corporate but also to small and medium size business enterprises (SME’s). These staffing agencies have emerged as the largest employment providers and as one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. economy.

1. Staffing agencies growing affinity towards specialization
Staffing agencies are the essential components to the standard hiring process for not only
large corporate but also to small and medium size business enterprises (SME’s). These
staffing agencies have emerged as the largest employment providers and as one of the
fastest growing segments of the U.S. economy. The U.S. staffing companies has
employed on an average of 3.03 million temporary and contract employees per day during
the third quarter of 2013 which is up 2.6% from the same period in 2012 as per the survey
data released by the American Staffing Association. The data also showed that the
temporary and contract staffing sales totaled $27.38 billion in the third quarter of 2013
which is 2.8% higher than the same period of 2012.
Even though the above mentioned data brings in a positive outlook of the staffing firms
that seem to be on the same plane but on looking at each of their gross profit margins there
is a lot of difference among staffing agencies. The main reason for disparity in profitability
among these firms is due to specialization or lack of it. The research done by staffing
industry analysts opines that professional staffing revenues presently account for double
than that of the industry revenues compared to only 1/3rd
of the market some few decades
back. It is clearly an indication that more and more staffing companies are getting
attracted towards specialization based staffing services to raise their staffing revenues.
Among the staffing specialization services that are most in demand are the Accounting and
Finance specialists that represent a core area of staffing needs where quality factors of the
staff are more important. Further, accounting personnel are quite rare when compared to its
demand and as per the 2012-13 edition of the Occupational Outlook Handbook of the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, accounting related clerical work is expected to be among the top
15 occupations with strongest new job growth between 2010 and 2020. Therefore, finance
staffing agencies are earning one of the highest margins in the staffing industry. For
instance, Robert Half International (a provider of staffing & risk consulting services through

2. divisions such as Account temps, Robert Half Finance & Accounting) has one of the highest
revenues within the staffing industry.
The other specialization that is attracting attention is the Information Technology or IT
specialization with high end IT staffers who are usually recruited when there are urgent
projects and employers does not consider about price sensitiveness when hiring the services
of IT staffing agencies. The industry data too exemplifies about higher growth of the IT
staffing arena. The Computer World’s annual 2013 survey opines that close to 1/3rd
of
companies are planning to have more IT staff to their ranks during 2014. The IT staffing
industry is expected a growth of 7% in 2014. Finally, it can be said that more and more
staffing firms are joining the bandwagon of specialization in the field of health care,
engineering, IT, finance etc.