UK Temp Billings Hit Three-Year High as Permanent Hiring Decline Eases
The News
The latest KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs, compiled by S&P Global from approximately 400 recruitment consultancies, finds temp billings growth at its quickest pace since April 2023. Permanent staff appointments continued to fall — the 45th consecutive month of decline — but the downturn eased to its softest rate in three months. Candidate availability rose markedly, driven by redundancies, though some workers grew hesitant to seek new roles. Starting salaries and temp wages increased at the strongest rate since January, though both remain below the survey's historical average. Lisa Fernihough of KPMG UK attributed the pivot to temporary work to ongoing geopolitical uncertainty, noting that chief executives prefer flexible hiring to progress short-term projects without long-term commitments.
Why It Matters
For TA leaders, this data confirms what most are already living: permanent headcount approvals remain hard to win, while contingent budgets flow more easily. The 45-month permanent decline streak is not a blip — it's a structural preference shift. But the easing pace and the simultaneous rise in starting pay suggest the freeze is thawing at the edges. The sharp rise in candidate availability from redundancies is a double-edged signal: more talent in the pool, but also more nervous candidates who need convincing. If your hiring plan still assumes 2023 conditions, the gap between your permanent requisition pipeline and your actual conversion rate is probably widening.
Taking Action
All action is situated in your corporate context. These are starting points, not prescriptions — choose what fits.
Connect
Who to talk with in your enterprise
Your head of contingent workforce management. If temp billings are at a three-year high across the market, check whether your own contingent spend is tracking proportionally — and whether your statement of work vs. temp classification is holding up under audit. Your CFO or finance partner. The shift from permanent to temp is a cost-structure decision, not just an HR one. Ask whether the premium you're paying for flexibility is being tracked against the permanent salaries you're deferring.
Inspect
What to take a closer look at
Pull your permanent-to-temp hire ratio for the last six months and compare it to the same period a year ago. If temp has grown as a share of total engagements, verify that your contingent worker compliance — right-to-work checks, IR35 determinations, co-employment risk — has scaled to match. Also check your permanent time-to-fill trend: if the market says the decline is easing but your fill rates aren't improving, the bottleneck is internal, not external.
Reflect
What to think about more deeply
If permanent placements have fallen every month for nearly four years and temp billings just hit a three-year high, at what point do you stop calling this a temporary hesitation and start designing your hiring operating model around contingent-first by default?