NAICS 561320Canadian industry · 6-digitlocal market1 market record

Temporary help services

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in supplying workers for limited periods of time to supplement the workforce of the client. The individuals provided are employees of the temporary help service establishment. These establishments do not provide direct supervision of their employees at the clients' work sites. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 1,497
Under 10 employeesA: 30%
Establishments · USA: 39,366
Employment · USA: 3,928,974
Payroll · USA: $177.0B

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–427018%

5–918612%

10–191349%

20–4931321%

50–9920514%

100–19919213%

200–49917011%

500+272%

Of 1,497 Canadian establishments with employees, 30% have fewer than ten — an industry where large establishments carry real weight.

Where they areA

Ontario71047%

Quebec36324%

British Columbia15610%

Alberta14810%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Administrative and Waste Services, US · opened 2020

79.4%

1 year

63.6%

3 years

51.5%

5 years

37%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 561, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

local competitionlow capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 561 Administrative and support services

Janitorial, landscaping, security and staffing: low capital and easy to start, so margins are competed down to labour cost. Route density and contract retention decide the outcome.

Who sets the price: Tender and the client's procurement; labour is most of the cost.
The software it runs on: Workforce scheduling, route and work-order management, staffing front and back office.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Operating businessScreened

Temporary Staffing AgencyStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost

The business funds payroll before the invoice clears, which makes it a working-capital business wearing a services costume — every new placement consumes cash and factoring takes the margin that would otherwise fund growth. Gross margins are thin, clients switch on price, and workers switch for a dollar an hour. Screened alongside the general employment-services record at 5613.

NAICS 5613205 vendors named10 sourced figuresOpen →

Filed above — wider than this industry

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 5613 Employment services

Employment Services & AI RecruitingOne thing must be true

binding constraint: incumbent vulnerability

Recruiting is reachable — a founder with a phone can bill a placement fee in the first month, and the 4,708 Canadian establishments in this group are evidence of how little it costs to start. The cut is where the value is settling. AI screening is not a product an entrant can own; it is a feature the employer's system of record is absorbing, and that layer is the one growing. Workday's revenue rose 13% to $9,552M in the year to 31 January 2026, while the agencies sitting above it went backwards: Robert Half's revenues fell to $5,379M from $5,796M, with permanent placement down 10%, and ManpowerGroup's were down 2.1% in constant currency. A screening tool that does not hold the requisition has to buy distribution from the vendor that does, and that vendor ships the same feature to every customer it already bills. The agency side is no kinder: the fee follows the placement, not the brand, a client can run three agencies at one requisition and pay only the one that lands it, and 1,466 of the 4,708 Canadian establishments have fewer than five people. There is no scale position here to buy into, and the layer that is accumulating one is not for sale to an entrant.

NAICS 56137 vendors named11 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Workforce scheduling, route and work-order management, staffing front and back office.

Catalogued categories — named, not analysed

Gig workforce management SaaS 5613 Staffing agency management SaaS 5613

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Companies in this industry · 1

Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.

Company	Filed under	Revenue	Rank
Kelly ServicesNASDAQ:KELYA	Temporary help services561320	$4.3B	1/1

Who works here

The occupations employed in Administrative and support, waste management and remediation services, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Security guards and related security service occupations Mostly one sector 69.7%

Contractors and supervisors, agriculture, horticulture and related operations and services Mostly one sector 67.9%

Logging, forestry, landscaping and other related labourers Mostly one sector 56%

Water and rail transport operators and labourers and related occupations Mostly one sector 16.8%

Service supervisors Mostly one sector 14.2%

Tourism and amusement services occupations Mostly one sector 12.9%

Educational and employment counsellors Mostly one sector 8.5%

Logging and forestry workers Mostly one sector 6.4%

Labourers in processing, manufacturing and utilities Mostly one sector 6.3%

Roofers, glaziers, painters, decorators and floor covering installers One industry 4.7%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Other technical trades Across the economy 29.2%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 15%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 13.5%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 6.6%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 5.1%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 4.8%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 4.5%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 4%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 4%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 3.9%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →