Market Overview

Size of the three major HR business category market (temporary staffing, recruitment for white-collar-jobs, and outplacement) for FY2022 grew by 7.8% from the preceding fiscal year to 9,235.5 billion yen, based on the sales at businesses. In detail, the temporary staffing market increased to 8,860 billion yen (up 7.6% from the previous fiscal year), the recruitment market for white-collar jobs rose to 351 billion yen (up 18.6% on the same basis), and the outplacement market declined to 24.5 billion yen (down 23.7% on the same basis).

The stable growth of the temporary staffing market attributes to the rising demand for human resources in various industries and business types, which has been continuing from the preceding fiscal year. In terms of job category, demand for IT personnel such as IT engineers is rising remarkably, while the demand grows stable for general office workers, the occupation that has large number of workers.

The recruitment market for white-collar jobs is also expanding steadily increased demand backed by societal background continuing from the previous fiscal year to normalize economic activities stagnated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the recovery in demand for human resources was slow in some industries that were severely affected by the pandemic, such as the food service industry and the travel industry, as a whole, the demands showed continuous recovery, which led the market size to exceed that of FY2019, a year before COVID-19 outbreak.

On the other hand, the outplacement market shrank considerably. Despite the trend of resuming business activities back to normal from the pandemic recession, increasing uncertainty in overseas situations led an increasing number of enterprises to refrain from reviewing their staffing structure or implementing organizational reforms.

Noteworthy Topics

Unique Strategies by Temporary Staffing Service Providers in Regional Areas

Temporary staffing service providers in regional areas have, regardless of company size, strong business relationship with local enterprises thanks to the long history of establishing business specifically in the area. Although these temporary staffing service providers often compete with key national service providers, they have solid business foundation, backed by unique sales strategies.

For example, in addition to the direct sales to local companies, they acquire new orders through referrals. By building strong connections with public institutions like surrounding local governments and financial institutions in the region, the service providers anticipate being introduced to local companies having staffing difficulties. In other cases, some service providers establish a solid position by specializing in industries or job categories with little competition in the region.

Temporary staffing providers in regional areas are contributing to the growth of the entire temporary staffing industry market with unique strategies, thar are different from those of major (national) providers who develop market by increasing the number of sales reps and expanding into new business areas.

Future Outlook

The market size of the three major human resource business categories (temporary staffing, recruitment for white-collar-jobs, and outplacement) for FY2023 is expected to increase by 7.3% on year-on-year basis to 9,910.7 billion yen, based on the sales at businesses. As labor shortage still continues, regardless of industry, sector, or employee size, the demand for human resource-related services for the purpose of recruiting personnel (securing resources) is expected to expand steadily in FY2023.

Research Outline