Which States Rely Most on Temp Workers?

A new report by The Kaplan Group shows that temp help employment more than doubled between 1990 and its March 2022 peak, yet has since fallen by nearly one‑quarter. At the same time, online interest in “staffing agencies” and “temp work” is higher than ever, signaling curiosity and concern that don’t fully align with actual hiring. 

For staffing firms, that mismatch matters as it can push agencies to take on weaker clients, and turn today’s temp‑work slowdown into tomorrow’s credit‑ and collections problem.

Key Takeaways

• Search interest for “staffing agency” now regularly hit index values above 80–100, compared with the 30–50 range in the mid‑2000s.​

• At the same time, temp employment has fallen about 22.8% from its March 2022 peak of roughly 3.18 million workers to about 2.45 million in December 2025.​

• In South Carolina, temp workers make up about 3.3% of the workforce (≈71,120 workers), with Illinois, Tennessee, Georgia, and New Jersey all around 2.8%–3.2%.​

How Is Public Interest in Temp Work Growing?

To see how visible temp work is outside the industry, we looked at Google Trends data for “staffing agency,” “temp work,” and “temp worker” searches in the United States from 2004 through early 2026. Each series is scaled from 0 to 100, where 100 represents the peak search interest over the period. In the early years, searches for “staffing agency” and “temp work” typically sit in the 30s and 40s, while “temp worker” often registers near zero. Over time, search interest for “staffing agency” and “temp work” shows cycles but a general upward drift, with several peaks around 2018–2020 and again in the mid‑2020s.

Search interest around key turning points is particularly telling. For example, “staffing agency” searches surged to an index value of 100 in January 2020, just before the pandemic disruptions, and again in early 2024 and 2025. Searches for “temp work” and “temp worker” also climb to high levels in 2022–2026. Curiosity or concern about temp work is remaining high even as actual hiring is cooling, which can complicate forecasting and business development.

How Has Temporary Help Employment Changed?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics “Temporary Help Services” series tracks monthly employment in temp help from January 1990 through December 2025. The series starts at about 1.16 million temp workers in early 1990 and rises to over 3.1 million at its post‑1990 peak. Employment in temporary help services reached its high point in March 2022 at about 3.18 million workers. By December 2025, employment had dropped to about 2.45 million temp workers, roughly 22.8% below that peak. So, despite a clear uptrend of public interest the number of temp workers is on a downtrend. 

Looking at the latest stretch, the decline from mid‑2025 into year‑end has been steady but not catastrophic. Temp employment slipped from about 2.49 million workers in August 2025 to about 2.45 million in December 2025, with year‑over‑year changes running between about ‑2.2% and ‑3.9% during those months. When you index the series so that January 1990 equals 100, recent readings around 211–215 show that temp employment is still a bit more than double its early‑1990 level despite the recent pullback.

Does Temp Work Still Turn Down Before The Rest of The Labor Market?

Temporary help is widely seen as a leading indicator because employers cut short‑term, assignment‑based roles before they cut permanent staff. The Temporary Help Services series captures this behavior clearly across multiple cycles, including the early‑2000s slowdown, the Great Recession, and the sharp downturn at the onset of the pandemic. In each episode, temp employment dropped faster and deeper than the broader job market, then rebounded more quickly as companies tested demand with temp workers before committing to permanent hires.

The most recent cycle, however, looks different. After surging in 2021 and early 2022, temp help employment peaked in March 2022 and then drifted lower for nearly three years, even without an official recession. This extended slide suggests that employers are quietly trimming flexible labor and squeezing productivity out of existing staff rather than launching broad layoffs. 

Which States Rely Most on Temp Workers?

Temporary work is not distributed evenly across the country. The state snapshot in the dataset ranks states by “share of workforce that are temp worker,” along with total temp workers, full‑time and part‑time shares, and unemployment rates. 

At the top of the list is South Carolina, where temp workers account for about 3.3% of the workforce, or roughly 71,120 people. Illinois, Tennessee, Georgia, and New Jersey each have temp shares around 2.8%–3.2% of their workforces, with total temp workers ranging from about 99,700 to nearly 190,000.

Many of these high‑temp states also have relatively high full‑time shares and modest unemployment rates, meaning temp workers are embedded in otherwise healthy labor markets. At the same time, some large states with big staffing footprints (such as California and Texas) have slightly lower temp shares but very large absolute numbers of temp workers. This creates different types of exposure: smaller states with very high temp shares can experience more concentrated local shocks, while large states can expose staffing firms to big dollar volumes even at moderate temp shares.

What Do These Trends Mean For Staffing‑company Credit Risk?

National temp employment is down 23% from its March 2022 peak, yet Google search interest in “staffing agency” remains elevated. This disconnect could create a dangerous dynamic where agencies are extending more credit to weaker clients exactly when those clients are least able to pay. 

Industry data confirms the pressure is building. The average staffing agency days sales outstanding (DSO) now sits at 49 days in 2025, up from a pre-pandemic benchmark of 34–47 days, and 21% of staffing invoices are paid late by 10 or more days. For agencies already operating on tight margins—where payroll accounts for 75–85% of operating expenses—these delays can quickly become existential.​

Industry observers note that clients prioritize their own payroll over paying staffing invoices when cash flow tightens, and seasonal hires often go undocumented, increasing backdoor hire risk. By the time an invoice is 60–90 days overdue, the damage is done: the client is already in talks with other creditors, and leverage has evaporated. 

The problem is compounded by geography. States like South Carolina, Illinois, Tennessee, Georgia, and New Jersey have temp shares above 2.8% and concentrated staffing industry presence. When these regional markets cool, they cool fast and together. 

Financial regulators have documented how concentration risk—particularly in industries and regions experiencing distress—can lead to cascading defaults, where multiple borrowers or clients in the same sector fail simultaneously. An agency with 40–50% of receivables in one high-concentration state faces exactly this domino effect: multiple clients in the same industry all hit cash-flow problems at once, and bankruptcy becomes likely.​

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Methodology: This study combines three datasets from temp_workforce.xlsx to describe how temporary work has evolved and what the current downshift implies for staffing-company credit risk.

Data used:

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Data:

• BLS Current Employment Statistics (CES), Temporary Help Services (TEMPHELPS) series, January 1990–December 2025​

• BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), all-industry and NAICS 561320 (temporary help services) data by state​

Google Trends Data:

• Monthly U.S. search interest for “staffing agency,” “temp work,” and “temp worker,” 2004–2026

Industry Research and Analysis:

• PRN Funding, “25+ Healthcare Staffing Statistics for 2025,” November 2025​

• EZ Staffing Factoring, “Staffing Factoring Statistics 2025: Cash Flow Trends and Market Growth,” November 2024​

• StaffingDebt.com, “When to Write Off Bad Debt: A Guide for Staffing Agencies,” September 2025​

• StaffingDebt.com, “Navigating Seasonal Debt Collection Spikes for Staffing Agencies,” August 2025​

• CNBC, “Seasonal hiring 2025 to fall to lowest level since 2009 recession,” September 2025​

• CNN Business, “Economic warning sign: Holiday jobs are tougher to find,” December 2025​

• Journal Record, “Companies scale back hiring as they brace for recession,” August 2025​

Financial Risk Management:

• National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), “Managing Concentration Risk in Credit Unions,” December 2025​

• Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), “Concentrations of Credit,” Comptroller’s Handbook

Preparation and calculations: For the BLS series, the analysis uses levels and simple growth rates (month-over-month and year-over-year) and highlights key turning points by comparing peak vs latest and other anchor months.

For Google Trends, we interpret the indices as attention, not employment. We summarize patterns using time-series charts and compute yearly averages of the monthly indices to smooth seasonality and make multi-year comparisons clearer.

For the state section, states are ranked by temp-worker share of workforce to avoid size bias; counts are referenced to distinguish “high share” states from “high volume” states.

Interpretation boundaries: Google Trends is not a measure of jobs or revenue, and because each term is indexed independently, comparisons across terms are directional and timing-based rather than absolute. The state table is treated as a cross-sectional snapshot suitable for geographic comparison, not a historical state-by-state trend.