As the US staffing industry continues to develop, it remains one of the most important and resilient labour markets in the US. After the initial shock of the pandemic in 2020, we have seen two years of growth – 33% in 2021 and 17% in 2022 to reach $218.8 billion. Notably, the travel nurse segment has seen an incredible six-fold growth, rising from $6.5 billion in 2019 to $40.7 billion last year.
However, for 2023, we expect the trend of robust growth to pivot to a trend of slower growth or even modest declines. This is due to various headwinds, including high interest rates, more caution among clients, decreased government spending, geopolitical risks, and slower wage increases – as well as many sectors having reached record levels of temporary workers making further expansion more difficult.
As far as the segment outlook for 2023, we forecast the industrial segment to be flat and office/clerical to decline 2%. Most professional staffing segments are still expected to grow, although at a slower pace than last year, with IT (+5%), finance/accounting (+6%), and engineering (+7%) faring well. All healthcare segments should grow, apart from travel nursing (-25%) as volume
