The Level Index
Staffing & RecruitingHow does your staffing agency compare?
Gross margin, recruiter productivity, time-to-fill, and DSO benchmarks for U.S. temporary staffing, executive search, and managed services. Sourced from Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA), American Staffing Association (ASA), Bullhorn GRID, BLS, and the Level founding team's operator analysis.
Last refreshed April 2026. SIA U.S. forecast updates, ASA quarterly statistics, Bullhorn GRID 2026 industry trends report, BLS CES temp help series, and 10-K filings of public staffing companies.
$184B
Market size
U.S. staffing market (2024 SIA)
27K+
Firms
U.S. staffing & recruiting firms
2.54M
Employment
Temp help jobs (BLS Dec 2024)
376%
Turnover
Temp worker turnover, assignment-driven (ASA)
Check your own numbers
The spread looks fine until DSO turns growth into a financing product.
Staffing agencies do not only need margin benchmarks. They need the cash math: bill rate, pay rate, payroll cycle, client terms, recruiter productivity, and the working-capital gap.
In the free audit, we check:
- •gross margin by segment, client, recruiter, and placement type
- •pay-bill spread versus payroll cycle and client payment terms
- •DSO, factoring cost, and gross profit per recruiter
We use this to prepare your audit before the call. Your numbers stay private.
About the Data
The Level Index is compiled from the founding team's analysis of 2,200+ contractors ($13.25B in revenue) across operating, private-equity, and CFO roles, plus named public filings, government statistics, and industry association surveys. This page focuses on industrial, clerical, healthcare, it & executive staffing, drawn from SIA · ASA · Bullhorn · BLS, public company 10-Ks, and the founding team's operator analysis. Where private-company quartile data is not publicly published, we use the best available median, range, or surveyed cohort and label the source clearly.
Methodology
True P10-P90 percentile distributions for $1-50M U.S. staffing firms are not published in free public sources; SIA segment reports and NAPS benchmarking are member-restricted. Where percentiles are not available, this page uses Bullhorn distributions, public company filings, ASA macro stats, and SIA-cited segment medians, all clearly labeled.
The Level CLEAR Framework
Five pillars of staffing & recruiting financial health
Every metric in the Level Index maps to one of five pillars. Together they give you a complete picture of where money is made, lost, stuck, or at risk.
DSO (your team gets paid weekly, clients pay in 45+ days), payroll funding cycle, working capital. Cash timing is the #1 reason staffing agencies blow up in downturns.
Recruiter productivity (GP per producer), time-to-fill, submittal-to-fill ratio, recruiter turnover. The recruiter IS the product.
Gross margin by vertical (IT/F&A high, light industrial low), EBITDA margin, SG&A leverage, perm fee mix. Segment choice drives margin more than execution.
Client retention (NPS 45 industry avg per ClearlyRated), repeat client revenue, fill rate, average bill rate vs. pay rate, conversion fee revenue.
Customer concentration, vertical concentration (tech vs. industrial vs. healthcare), MSP/VMS exposure, workers comp (especially industrial), recruiter turnover.
Key Finding
U.S. temp help employment fell 16% from its 2022 peak, but Bullhorn data shows the winners are getting faster, not bigger.
BLS reports temp help services lost ~505,000 jobs from the March 2022 peak through late 2024. Yet Bullhorn GRID 2026 found that 56% of top-performing agencies now place candidates in under 10 days (22% in under 3 days), and they capture revenue while everyone else fights for scraps. Speed-to-fill correlates with revenue growth more than any other operating metric in staffing.
If your time-to-fill is over 20 days, you are losing winnable orders to faster competitors. The fix is rarely more recruiters, it's better pipeline management and submittal velocity.
DSO is the structural killer in staffing, your team gets paid weekly while clients pay in 45+ days.
Days Sales Outstanding (DSO)
Source / sample: Robert Half FY2024 10-K + industry guidance
Staffing is a float business. RHI's implied ~49-day DSO is what scaled, diversified staffing looks like. Healthcare staffing typically runs 45-60+ days because hospital RCM is slow. If your DSO exceeds your payroll cycle by more than 30 days, you need factoring or a larger revolver.
How we measured
Robert Half FY2024 10-K (AR $772M ÷ Revenue $5.8B × 365)
Speed-to-fill is the single best predictor of revenue growth.
Time-to-Fill (Bullhorn GRID 2026)
Source / sample: Bullhorn GRID 2026 (n: thousands of staffing firms)
In tight niches, days to placement is a competitive weapon. Top-quartile search firms generate roughly 3x the submissions per recruiter, better pipeline beats more recruiters every time.
How we measured
Bullhorn GRID 2026 Industry Trends
Top-quartile recruiters generate $380K+ gross profit each. The rest don't.
Annual Gross Profit per Producer / Recruiter
Source / sample: Illustrative range; derivable from public 10-Ks (gross profit / producer headcount) and the Level founding team's staffing analysis
Comp ratios at top performers commonly reach 30-35% of gross profit, and that math only works when GP per producer sits at the top of the curve. You can sanity-check the anchors yourself: a public agency's gross profit divided by its producer headcount lands in this range. Treat the bands as directional, not a published distribution.
How we measured
the Level founding team's staffing analysis; public staffing 10-Ks (GP per producer, derivable)
Gross margin varies 17 points across staffing segments.
Gross Margin by Segment (FY2024)
Source / sample: Kforce, TrueBlue 10-Ks + Staffing Hub 2024 survey
Segment choice matters more than 'generic staffing.' IT/finance commands premium markup; light industrial is brutal on price. Healthcare margin compressed in 2023-2024 as travel nurse rates collapsed (Baird research: −280 bps 2022-2023).
How we measured
Kforce, TrueBlue, Kelly 10-Ks + Staffing Hub 2024
A 27% gross margin becomes a 3.6% net margin. Here is exactly where the 23 points go.
Kforce FY2024: gross margin to net margin (% of revenue)
Source / sample: Kforce FY2024 10-K (SEC EDGAR CIK 930420, results as % of revenue)
This is the staffing margin illusion, and you can re-derive it yourself from the 10-K: gross profit 27%, then SG&A of 22% of revenue drops it to a 5% operating margin, and after interest and tax the net is 3.6%. On $10M of revenue that is roughly $360K of actual profit, not the $2.7M the gross line implies. The lever is not gross margin, it is SG&A productivity (gross profit per producer against fully-loaded internal cost).
How we measured
Kforce FY2024 10-K (SEC EDGAR CIK 930420); corroborated by Robert Half FY2024 (op 4.2%, net 4.3%)
Markup confusion is the most expensive mistake in staffing.
Markup % vs. Gross Margin %
Source / sample: Typical markup ranges by segment (SIA-cited); illustrative, not a published distribution
Markup % = (bill − pay) / pay. Gross margin % = (bill − pay) / bill. A 50% markup is only 33% gross margin. Pricing your bill rate using the wrong formula leaves $5-$15 per hour on the table at scale.
How we measured
SIA-cited segment markup ranges; formula is arithmetic
Workers comp is a first-class margin line in industrial staffing, not a footnote.
Workers Comp Cost as % of Payroll (light industrial, by risk tier)
Source / sample: Illustrative range; NCCI class-code loss costs vary by state and experience mod (EMR)
In FY2024, favorable development of prior-year workers-comp reserves added about 20 bps to TrueBlue's gross margin, even as total gross margin still contracted 60 bps to 25.9% (TBI FY2024 10-K); the workers-comp claims reserve balance declined $56.7M on the cash-flow statement. The takeaway holds: in light industrial staffing, WC is a first-class P&L and balance-sheet line, not a footnote, and experience-mod discipline compounds for three years.
How we measured
TrueBlue FY2024 10-K (SEC EDGAR); NCCI class-code loss costs
Benchmarks by Staffing Segment
Staffing & RecruitingGross margin and recruiter economics vary dramatically by vertical. IT and engineering carry the highest margins; light industrial the lowest.
IT / Technology
Gross margin (Kforce 2024)
26.5%
Finance & Accounting
Gross margin (Kforce 2024)
38.5%
Engineering / Design
Gross margin (Staffing Hub)
~33% avg
Healthcare / Travel
Gross margin (Staffing Hub)
~21% avg
Light Industrial
Gross margin (TBI proxy)
~25.9%
Executive Search
Model
Perm fee, high margin, lumpy
Advanced Staffing & Recruiting Metrics
Sub-segment breakdowns, advanced operational metrics, and percentile distributions for industrial, clerical, healthcare, it & executive staffing.
| Metric | Bottom Quartile | Median | Top Quartile | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gross Margin (IT) | < 22% | 26-28% | > 32% | Kforce FY2024: 26.5% Tech, 38.5% F&A |
| Gross Margin (Healthcare) | < 18% | 21-24% | > 27% | Compressed 2022-2024 as travel nurse rates fell |
| Gross Margin (Light Industrial) | < 22% | 25-28% | > 30% | TBI FY2024 ~25.9% |
| EBITDA Margin | < 4% | 7-10% | > 12% | ASGN FY2024: 11.0% adj EBITDA |
| Operating Margin | < 3% | 4-5% | > 7% | Kforce FY2024 5.0%, Robert Half 4.2% (SEC 10-Ks) |
| Net Profit Margin | negative in a down year | 3-4% | > 5% | Kforce FY2024 3.6%, Cross Country swung 3.6% to -1.1% year over year (SEC 10-Ks) |
| DSO | > 65 days | 45-55 days | < 35 days | RHI implied ~49d at scale |
| Working-Capital per $1M New Temp Revenue | > $150K | $100-125K | < $90K | Weekly payroll (DPO ~7d) vs 45-55d DSO = 40-50 day cash gap to fund |
| Time-to-Fill | > 30 days | 15-20 days | < 10 days | Bullhorn GRID 2026: 56% of top firms < 10d |
| GP per Producer (annual) | < $200K | $300K | > $400K | Directional; the Level founding team's staffing analysis + derivable from public 10-Ks (GP / producer headcount) |
| Recruiter Turnover (annual) | > 40% | ~25% | < 20% | ASA/Bullhorn industry research puts median internal-staff turnover around 25%, with wide variance. (The often-cited 400%+ figure is placed temp workers, not internal recruiters.) |
| Top 5 Client Concentration | > 60% | 30-40% | < 20% | MSP/VMS programs concentrate fast |
| Client NPS (ClearlyRated) | < 25 | 45 | > 60 | Industry NPS hit 45 in 2024 |
Benchmarks for other service businesses
Simple pricing
Three tiers, one ladder.
$99-$500/mo
Bookkeeping
The clean data layer: monthly books, reconciliations, and organized financials AI can work with.
$1,500-$5,000/mo
Scale
The full AI operating layer: custom agents, weekly actions, and benchmarks to grow margin per hour.
Custom
Platform / Multi-Office
Multi-branch benchmarking and scorecards for PE-backed and multi-location groups.
How does your staffing agency compare?
We'll benchmark your gross margin, recruiter productivity, time-to-fill, and DSO against the industry. Free audit included.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What's a healthy gross margin for a staffing agency?
By segment: IT 26-28%, finance/accounting 35-40%, engineering ~33%, light industrial 25-28%, healthcare/travel 21-24%. Executive search is fee-based and can run 60-90% gross. Your segment choice determines your ceiling more than your operating execution does.
What is the difference between markup and gross margin?
Markup % = (bill rate − pay rate) ÷ pay rate. Gross margin % = (bill rate − pay rate) ÷ bill rate. A 50% markup is only ~33% gross margin. Confusing these is one of the most expensive pricing mistakes in staffing. At scale, the math difference can leave $5-$15/hour on the table.
What is a normal DSO for a staffing company?
Healthy staffing agencies run DSO of 45-55 days. Top quartile is under 35 days. Healthcare staffing runs 45-60+ days because hospital RCM is slow. Robert Half implied ~49 days from FY2024 filings, that's what scaled, diversified staffing looks like. Above 65 days you need factoring or a much larger revolver.
What time-to-fill should I target?
Bullhorn GRID 2026: top performers fill in under 10 days (56% of revenue winners) and the elite 22% fill in under 3 days. If your time-to-fill is consistently above 20 days, you are losing winnable orders to faster competitors. Speed correlates with revenue growth more than any other operating metric.
What revenue should each recruiter generate?
Industry aggregates put top-25% recruiter gross profit at ~$380K annually, with elite search firms at $500K-$750K+. The top quartile generates ~3× the submissions per recruiter of average performers. Comp ratios commonly reach 30-35% of GP at top firms, but only because GP per producer is high enough to support it.
Sources
- • Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA), U.S. forecast updates 2024-2025
- • American Staffing Association (ASA), quarterly industry statistics
- • Bullhorn GRID, 2026 Industry Trends Report (time-to-fill distributions)
- • Hunt Scanlon / Recruiterflow, recruiter productivity benchmarks
- • BLS Current Employment Statistics, temp help services (CES6056132001)
- • Public staffing 10-Ks: Robert Half (RHI), Kforce (KFRC), ASGN, TrueBlue (TBI), Kelly (KELYA)
- • Level Index, the founding team's analysis of 2,200+ contractors ($13.25B revenue) across operating, private-equity, and CFO roles, extended with staffing operator observations
The Level Index represents the personal analysis and professional opinions of the Level team, compiled from public industry surveys, government statistics, SEC filings, and the founding team's operator analysis. All data is anonymized and aggregated. Specific figures are rounded and should be treated as directional benchmarks, not precise measurements. The Level Index does not constitute financial advice. Individual results vary based on segment, geography, company size, and operational maturity. © 2026 Level. All rights reserved.
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