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What is the U.S. market size for tech recruiting.
Hello! Thanks for your question about the U.S. market size for tech recruiting. The short answer is that it's not possible to know exactly how large this market is, as staffing agencies tend to keep their data private, but that we can estimate that it is at least $18.2 billion and could theoretically be as high as $78.4 billion. Below you will find a more thorough explanation of our findings.
METHODOLOGY
We did a deep dive of all of the available industry and government data to try to find the answer to your question. It was relatively easy to find the overall number of tech employees -- 6.5 million, as of the most recent estimate, with an average salary of around $100,000 -- and an estimate of the total payroll for tech employment, which comes to $654 billion (it is almost certainly much higher by now, but the most thorough data is from 2015).
We were also able to find, from internal industry reports, the size of the U.S. staffing industry, which is expected to grow to at least $127 billion by 2018. Of the employees placed by U.S. staffing agencies, 13% are placed in engineering, information technology, and scientific positions.
FINDINGS
Again, the exact information that you were hoping to find isn't publicly available, but we can infer some things from the information that we've found. At the very minimum, technology staffing represents 13% of the staffing industry, an $18.2 billion market share, though it could well be much higher, since tech employees make almost twice as much as their peers in other industries. You mentioned that you weren't as interested in low-skill employees, but most agencies keep their specific breakdowns private -- we do know, however, that internal reporting saw an increase in high-skill recruiting for jobs like UI and web development and a decrease in lower-skill work like QA.
If we wanted to be really ambitious, and theorize that every tech position in the country might be supplied by a staffing agency at some point, we can estimate a much higher market share for tech recruiting. At a rate of 12% per employee and a potential revenue base of around $654 billion, we would be looking at a potential market share of $78.4 billion. In truth, the market share for tech recruiting is probably somewhere between these high and low estimates, but with the rate of growth for tech employment being so high, it's almost certainly safe to give a more generous estimate.
SUMMARY
In short, based on the internal metrics of the staffing industry, the market size for tech recruiting is around $18.2 billion, but the potential market share is as high as $78.4 billion.
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