Employment Placement Agency Revenue Benchmark

Average Employment Placement Agency Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every employment placement agency with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts, which for some agencies include the wages of workers they place under their own payroll. Dividing that total by the number of agencies gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment shown below.

≈$2,964,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

How this is calculated: about $21.4 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 7,212 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $2,964,000 per employer establishment.

Scope: Employment Placement Agencies, NAICS 561311. The category covers agencies that list job openings and place applicants in permanent positions with client employers. Temporary help services, executive search firms and professional employer organizations are counted in separate categories. Classified separately in group 5613: 561312 Executive Search Services; 561320 Temporary Help Services; 561330 Professional Employer Organizations. Nothing outside that code is counted on this page.

Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed September 2026

Employer Establishments at Year Five Varies by cohort

Employment Services, NAICS 5613, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 48.6 to 69.1 percent. This benchmark covers Employment Services, NAICS 5613, as a whole, and this category accounts for 7,212 of the 56,763 employer establishments in it. A count by age is not a survival rate, because the figures compare two headcounts rather than follow one set of businesses.

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll divided by receipts, both as published for the same year.

Payroll share of receipts, Employment Placement Agencies, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 56.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, a high share because recruiters are the business and because some agencies in this category also run workers through their own payroll, which pushes wages into both revenue and payroll.

Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and in a recruiter-owned agency the founder's own placements produce revenue that does not appear in the payroll figure.

Business Scale and Ownership Structure Official data

How large the average establishment is, and whether the population is independent operators or multi-site companies.

Scale and ownership, Employment Placement Agencies, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

The average establishment employed about 40.2 people, and the industry counted 1.1 employer establishments per firm. That staff count reflects a category in which some agencies carry placed workers on their own payroll while a small recruiting shop employs a handful of recruiters, and the establishments per firm figure shows mostly single-office agencies with some multi-branch firms.

These are arithmetic industry averages. They state the size of the average establishment and show that multi-establishment ownership exists. They do not show the distribution of business sizes and they do not measure market concentration.

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Data Source Notice

This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.

Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.

Questions Worth Asking BusinessNES analysis

Employment Placement Agency: what a fee-per-hire average cannot say about a recruiting business.

Before you rely on this benchmark

• Contingency or retained search? Contingency recruiters are paid only when a candidate is hired and compete with other agencies on the same opening, while retained work brings fees regardless of outcome for exclusive searches. Both models sit in this category with different revenue certainty.
• How is the hiring market moving? Placement fees follow hiring volume and salaries, so a strong job market lifts revenue without any change in effort, and a hiring freeze in a key industry can empty the pipeline within months. A single census year catches that cycle at one moment.
• Which industries does the agency serve? Healthcare, technology, finance and skilled trades recruiters face different fee levels, candidate scarcity and client expectations, and a specialist agency's fortunes follow its niche. The average blends generalists with specialists.
• What does a failed placement cost? Replacement periods require the agency to replace a hire who leaves early or refund part of the fee, so revenue booked at placement can partly reverse. The share of placements that stick is a central quality measure that receipts do not show.
• How are recruiters compensated? Commission splits on fees, base salaries with bonuses and owner-recruiters who keep their own placements produce very different payroll shares for the same revenue. The structure behind the payroll figure varies from agency to agency.
• Does the agency also do temporary staffing? Some placement agencies add temporary or contract staffing, which brings worker wages into revenue and payroll and changes the whole profile of the business. Temporary help services are counted separately, but hybrid agencies blur the line.