Staffing and outsourcing: temp work, recruitment, call centres and work platforms

Lesson 3 of 3 Math checked Facts checked against sources on 1 October 2026 13 min

Staffing and outsourcing players, trends 2024 to 2026, and how to crack the cases

Who the players are by region, what changed from 2024 to 2026 (the hiring slowdown, AI in contact centres, shift apps, rules for gig work), typical prompts, traps and drills.

Industry brief, with a one-minute summary: Staffing and outsourcing

Firm processes and online tests change from year to year and differ by office. Use this to prepare, and confirm the exact current steps on the firm's own careers page.

Key takeaways

Staffing and outsourcing cases usually ask why profit fell when hiring slowed, how to respond to AI, whether to enter a new country or service, or how to price a contract.
Common traps: Reaching for a generic framework instead of the real driver: in staffing that is the spread over the worker's cost and the hours billed; in outsourcing, billable hours against fixed site costs and who keeps the saving from automation.
Permanent hiring hit hard: ManpowerGroup's gross profit fell 2.9 percent in 2025 while revenue rose 0.6 percent.
Shift apps inside the agencies: Randstad said its digital marketplaces earn about EUR 4 billion of yearly revenue, with 1.4 million shifts booked by workers themselves in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Key idea

Staffing and outsourcing cases usually ask why profit fell when hiring slowed, how to respond to AI, whether to enter a new country or service, or how to price a contract. The answer comes back to the spread between what the client pays and what the worker costs, how many paid hours are billed, and how much of the work clients will still buy from people.

Examples of staffing and outsourcing players by region (examples only, not a ranking)

Examples of staffing and outsourcing players by region (examples only, not a ranking)
Region	Staffing and recruitment	Outsourcing and contact centres	Work platforms
Global	Randstad, Adecco Group, ManpowerGroup, Recruit Holdings (Indeed, Glassdoor and staffing)	Teleperformance (TP), Concentrix, Genpact, Accenture, Capgemini (with WNS)	Upwork, Fiverr, LinkedIn
Europe	Randstad (Netherlands), Adecco (Switzerland), Hays, PageGroup, Gi Group	Teleperformance, Webhelp (now part of Concentrix), Transcom, Majorel (now part of Teleperformance)	Malt, Randstad's shift apps, Coople
Middle East	Saudi Manpower Solutions (SMASCO), Maharah, TASC Outsourcing (UAE), global agencies' Gulf offices	Global BPO firms' Gulf centres, Elm and other state-linked service firms	Local job and shift apps
India	TeamLease, Quess Corp, Info Edge (Naukri)	Genpact, WNS (Capgemini), Firstsource, Teleperformance India, IT services firms' BPO arms	Apna, Upwork and Fiverr freelancers serving foreign clients
Southeast Asia	PERSOL (called PERSOLKELLY until July 2025), JobStreet (SEEK), Randstad and Adecco offices	Philippine centres of Concentrix, TaskUs, Teleperformance, Accenture and Alorica	Grab and Gojek drivers (covered in internet platforms), local freelance apps
United States	Robert Half, Kelly, AMN Healthcare (nurses), TrueBlue	Concentrix, TaskUs, Alorica	Upwork, Fiverr, Instawork, Wonolo

So-what

Staffing is spread across many firms in each country, while outsourcing is concentrated in a few large groups with centres in the Philippines, India and other lower-cost countries.

Size and margin of some large firms, 2025 (each in its own currency; Adecco, not shown, had a 19.2 percent gross margin and a 3.0 percent EBITA margin excluding one-offs)

Size and margin of some large firms, 2025 (each in its own currency; Adecco, not shown, had a 19.2 percent gross margin and a 3.0 percent EBITA margin excluding one-offs)
Company	Revenue	Growth	Margin
Randstad	EUR 23.1 billion	Down 4 percent reported; down 2 percent organic in Q4 2025	Underlying EBITA margin 3.1 percent
ManpowerGroup	USD 18.0 billion	Up 0.6 percent reported, down 2.1 percent in constant currency	Gross margin about 16.7 percent
Teleperformance (TP)	EUR 10.2 billion	Up 1.3 percent like-for-like, down 0.7 percent reported	EBITA margin 14.6 percent

So-what

Staffing agencies keep about 3 cents of each euro of revenue; a contact centre group keeps about 15, because it sells a managed service, not just the worker's hours.

Trends 2024 to 2026 (checked 1 October 2026)

A long hiring slowdown: in the Bureau of Labor Statistics data as revised by September 2026, US temporary help employment was below its level a year earlier for 43 months in a row, from November 2022 to May 2026, the longest such run since the series began in 1990, and rose on a year earlier from June 2026. It was about 2.52 million in August 2026, about 20 percent below its March 2022 peak of about 3.16 million. Randstad's revenue fell 2 percent organically in the fourth quarter of 2025, to a full year total of EUR 23.1 billion.
Permanent hiring hit hard: ManpowerGroup's gross profit fell 2.9 percent in 2025 while revenue rose 0.6 percent. It said lower permanent recruitment and a shift towards large clients on thinner staffing margins each took about a quarter of a point off its gross margin.
Shift apps inside the agencies: Randstad said its digital marketplaces earn about EUR 4 billion of yearly revenue, with 1.4 million shifts booked by workers themselves in the fourth quarter of 2025.
AI comes to the contact centre: in February 2024 Klarna said its AI assistant handled 2.3 million conversations, two thirds of its customer service chats, in its first month, the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents (a company claim, not independently checked). Teleperformance grew only 1.3 percent like-for-like in 2025 and expects 0 to 2 percent in 2026 under a new plan built around AI. Capgemini bought WNS for USD 3.3 billion in October 2025 to build AI-run operations.
The Philippines keeps growing: the IT and business process industry body IBPAP expected about USD 40 billion of export revenue in 2025 (from USD 38 billion in 2024) and targets USD 42 billion and nearly 1.97 million jobs in 2026.
New rules for gig work: the EU Platform Work Directive, which presumes platform workers are employees when there are facts showing the platform directs and controls their work (the platform can try to prove otherwise), must be in national law by 2 December 2026. India's four labour codes took effect on 21 November 2025; the social security code requires aggregators (app and platform companies) to pay 1 to 2 percent of their annual turnover, capped at 5 percent of what they pay gig and platform workers, into a social security fund.
Gulf demand: Saudi Manpower Solutions' revenue rose 10.7 percent to SAR 2.1 billion in 2025, helped by demand for workers from companies and households.

Staffing and outsourcing case prompts, the structure to use, and the first driver to check

Staffing and outsourcing case prompts, the structure to use, and the first driver to check
Prompt	Structure hint	First driver to check
A staffing agency's profit halved while revenue fell 5 percent. Why?	Gross profit by service (temp, perm), spread, hours, branch costs	Permanent placement fees and the spread on temp hours
How should a Philippine contact centre firm respond to AI?	Volumes by type of contact, pricing model, new services, cost base	Share of contacts AI can handle, and who keeps the saving under the contract
Should a European agency enter Saudi Arabia?	Market entry: demand, local hiring quotas, licences, partners, pricing	Rules on hiring nationals and the margin after local costs
Should a staffing firm build its own shift app?	Build or buy: worker and client adoption, take rate, cannibalisation of branches	Shifts booked through the app and cost per shift filled
A client wants to cut its outsourcing bill by 20 percent.	Price, volume, mix of onshore and offshore, automation	Moving work offshore or to automation against service levels

So-what

Start from the spread and the billable hours, then ask how AI, rules or the hiring cycle are changing them.

Using this in a case

Ask: which business (temp, permanent, outsourcing, platform); how the client pays (per hour, per placement, per transaction, per outcome); the spread or margin by service; and where the hiring cycle is.
Calculate: the spread and gross margin per hour or per week, the operating profit after branch costs, billable hours as a share of paid hours, and what a change in rate, volume or employer costs does.
Say: tie the number to the decision. For example, "A 3 percent rate cut removes about 90 percent of the profit on each worker, so I would trade price only for volume or a longer contract."

Common traps

Reaching for a generic framework instead of the real driver: in staffing that is the spread over the worker's cost and the hours billed; in outsourcing, billable hours against fixed site costs and who keeps the saving from automation. Reading revenue growth as success when it is mostly pass-through pay. Forgetting employer taxes and minimum wage rises. Treating AI only as a cost saving when hourly pricing turns it into lost revenue. Ignoring rules on employment status for gig workers, which can change the cost of a platform overnight.

Read the brief and related industries

The staffing and outsourcing brief puts this industry on one page. Consulting and IT services, and internet platforms, have their own briefs.

Staffing and outsourcing brief

Same pattern elsewhere

Contact centres follow the utilization pattern: paid capacity that earns only when it is billed. Work platforms follow the marketplace pattern.

The utilization pattern

Timed math drill

US temporary help employment was about 2.52 million in August 2026, about 20 percent below its peak in March 2022. About how many temp jobs were there at the peak, in millions? (Round to two decimals.)

Check your understanding

An outsourcing firm is paid per agent hour. Its client adds AI that handles a third of simple calls. Which pricing change protects the firm best?

Terms in this lesson

Market share Operating leverage Switching costs Network effects Take rate Synergy Capacity utilization

Sources for this lesson (19)

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