Randstad NV, one of the world’s leading staffing firms, has reported their first-quarter revenue results, with a 4.2% decrease in organic growth. Despite this, gross margin showed improvement. CEO Sander van ‘t Noordende highlighted the difficult economic conditions and praised the team’s performance in the face of these uncertain times.

Breaking it down further, North American and European revenue experienced mixed growth, with a 10% decrease and 2% increase respectively. In Randstad’s “global businesses” segment, organic growth was an increase of 2%. However., the “Monster” portion of the segment saw a decrease of 14%. Perm fees were reported to have decreased 8% on an organic basis.

In the North American market, revenues dropped 11% in the United States, with 4% and 15% decreases in professionals and staffing/in-house services respectively. Canada reported a 7% drop.

Notably, van ‘t Noordende remained cautious going forward, noting that the effects of labor market scarcity will remain. This muddied the outlook for share prices, with Randstad closing down 6.15%, and with the company’s market cap sitting at €9.48 billion