Temp help is growing again after 44 months
Temporary-help services employment was 0.4% higher in July than a year earlier, the first positive year-over-year reading since October 2022. The 44 consecutive months of declines from November 2022 through June 2026 were the longest such streak in the series, which begins in 1990. The level, 2.51 million jobs, remains 21% below the March 2022 peak of 3.16 million.
Staffing agencies are usually the first hiring lever companies pull and the first they cut, which is why this series leads payrolls at turning points. A 0.4% gain is small and can be revised away, and it does not mean the layoff cycle is over or that wage pressure is back. It means the flex layer of the labor market stopped shrinking.
Temporary Help Employment — level, year-over-year change and release dates
This chart is a frozen capture — the numbers above are as of Jul 2026 (BLS, released Aug 7) and will not update. The live page recomputes daily from the same dataset. A square version of this chart is available for feeds that crop landscape images.
