Temporary Help Services Employment Tracker Monthly BLS data with KORE1 commentary

Temp help employment fell by 10,900 jobs in September. That’s the second drop in three months. And it’s still 15,200 jobs higher than a year ago. So which is it? Rising or falling? Falling, for now. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 2,486,800 people on temp help agency payrolls in September 2026. September lost 10,900. July lost 10,000, with a flat August in between. Read the longer arc and it looks different. Through late 2025 the series kept sliding, and it hit 2,451,400 in December, the lowest level since July 2020, before six straight gains from January to June added 56,100 jobs. July broke the run. Then the revisions. On September 4, BLS put July 2026 at plus 5,200. On October 2, it revised July to minus 10,000. That’s 15,200 jobs cut from one month in a single report. That’s why we hatch the preliminary months on the tracker instead of reading them as final. A headline about one month should never drive a headcount decision on its own.

Why watch temp help at all? Temps are the cheapest hours to add and the easiest to drop. No requisition. No severance. No benefits to unwind. So when demand softens, agency headcount goes first. Same on the way back. Employers test a recovery with temps before they open permanent roles, because a temp they no longer need costs them nothing to release and a permanent hire they no longer need costs them a great deal. Devin Hornick, a partner at KORE1, puts it simply. Temp is the first to dip and the first to come back. Now the honest caveat. It’s an early read on caution, not a recession clock. From April 2022 to December 2025, temp help fell in 41 of 45 months, while total payrolls kept climbing to a record 159.0 million. Temp help went from 2.1% of all payroll jobs at the peak to 1.6% now. So we read it as a gauge of how nervous employers are about permanent headcount. Right now? Nervous.

Our read on September? It looks like a pause, not a pullback. Temp help gave back 10,900 jobs, but the level is still 35,400 above the December low. And total payrolls rose 29,000 in the same report, with unemployment at 4.2%. What changed is the summer, because July went from a gain to a loss on revision, which tells us employers started trimming temp hours earlier than the first prints showed. For a hiring plan, that points one way. Contract first. A KORE1 contractor starts a median of 3 days after an accepted offer and stays a median of 116 days. So if the work is funded and the headcount isn’t approved, put it on contract hours now and revisit the permanent seat after the November and December prints, since that’s long enough to carry a project into spring without betting a requisition on one quarter’s numbers.

Four moves when temp help dips, and none of them needs a forecast. Flex before you commit headcount. Price the bridge first, with the role, metro and weeks. Plan the 1,040-hour exit. And read the revision, not the headline. That exit matters. A KORE1 contractor can convert to your payroll at no fee after 1,040 hours, about six months full time. And on the revisions, wait for the third print before you treat a month as real.

How many people work in temporary help services? About 2,486,800 as of September 2026, by the BLS count. That’s roughly 1.6% of all U.S. payroll jobs, down from 2.1% at the March 2022 peak of 3,161,400, which is a smaller share of the workforce but still a very large one. When’s the next number? Friday, November 6, at 8:30 in the morning Eastern, inside the BLS jobs report for October. August and September get revised in that report too. Expect both to move. And how do we pull the data? Straight from the BLS public API, the morning each report comes out. We don’t smooth it, adjust it or forecast it. When a month moves, its old print stays on the tracker as a dashed outline, so you see what the headline said the first time and what it became after BLS revised it. If you’ve got funded work and no approved headcount, tell us the role, metro, start date and length. A KORE1 recruiter comes back with candidates and a bill rate. The full tracker, with every revision, is on KORE1.com.