The energy at SIA Executive Forum North America was palpable. You can’t beat the curiosity, connection, and conversation generated by over 100 expert speakers and 600+ senior staffing leaders. The possibilities for growth and innovation feel endless when everyone’s attention turns to answer the most pressing questions: What does the market really look like right now? Where is AI actually taking us? And how do some firms keep growing in a market that leaves most treading water?
We came away with pages of notes, a few provocative one-liners we can't stop thinking about, and a renewed sense of why the work we do at Cartwheel –simplifying accounts receivable for staffing firms – matters more now than ever. Here's our honest recap.
SIA President Ursula Williams and Executive Director of Global Research John Nurthen opened the conference with a data-rich keynote that set an honest tone. Job growth has slowed dramatically from 3.3 million jobs added in 2023 to just 745,000 in 2025. The labor market isn't crashing, but it is barely moving. Kory Kantenga, Head of Economics at LinkedIn, put it well: "Unfortunately, uncertainty is a pillar that will remain. We will continue to see the stretching of decisions, and a pervasive 'wait and see' attitude."
On the macro side, US GDP growth has remained positive every year since 2021 and is forecast at +2.5% for 2026, which isn’t bad but certainly isn't the rocket fuel staffing wants or needs. The temporary penetration rate sits at 1.54%, well off its 2.10% peak. And the total US staffing market came in at $178.7B in 2025, down 3% year-over-year, continuing a correction that began after the 2022 peak of $243.9B.
The punchline from SIA's data: the staffing industry is underperforming GDP. We should be growing at a rate commensurate with a 2%+ economy–but we're not. That gap is a problem worth solving.
There was a notable bright spot, though. For the first time in 2–3 years, SIA is forecasting positive growth across every staffing category in 2026. Healthcare and Life Sciences lead the way (5% projected growth). Engineering is outperforming the broader industry. Even IT, battered by the so-called "SaaSpocalypse" — with Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Salesforce, and others cutting tens of thousands of roles (while simultaneously hiring) is projected to tick back up by 1% in 2026.
The firms that are doing really well right now? They share a profile: organic revenue growth of at least 15%, a disciplined focus on niche segments, and operational foundations that let them move fast when an opportunity arises.
One of the most useful frames from the conference is SIA's "New Staffing Market" model. The pre-COVID staffing market is gone. In its place is something shaped by the Great Resignation, the Great Stay, remote-work normalization, demographic aging, geopolitical risks, and a far more diverse workforce ecosystem. These aren't temporary disruptions; they're the new operating environment.
The data on the blended workforce underscores the shift. Contingent workers now make up 30% of the average enterprise workforce, with agency temporary workers, SOW consultants, freelancers, and outsourced labor filling different roles alongside full-time employees. The pie is bigger (global spend on contingent work hit $10.2 trillion in 2024), but the role of traditional staffing firms in it is relatively smaller.
A more complex, blended workforce means more invoicing complexity, more client billing relationships to manage, and more places where cash can get stuck. When slow pay is already cited by practitioners as one of the biggest operational headaches, and healthcare staffing firms (like a few I spoke to at the roundtables) are running DSOs of 42–44 days even with strong processes, it's clear that the back-office infrastructure of staffing firms needs investment into operational efficiency just as much as the front office. Streamlined accounts receivable isn't a nice-to-have; now it's table stakes for firms trying to operate leaner and faster in a tight market.
The session on "Rewiring Operations for AI Advantage" was one of the most practically useful conversations of the conference. The room included operators at various stages of AI adoption who could speak to early experiments to rethinking entire workflow architectures.
A few lines from that room that stuck with us:
"Be allergic to the word 'pilot.' By default, a pilot assumes it will fail. Start small, but start with the intention of going org-wide."- Tommy Hickey, VP of Technology, Nomad Health
"It is your duty as a leader to understand your workflows — understand why they are that way — and be ready and willing to rethink and redo them."– April Hansen, CEO, Barton Associates
"It's not a technology adoption problem. It's a change management problem."- April Hansen, CEO, Barton Associates
The consensus in the room was that most staffing firms are not very far along in their AI maturity. That's not necessarily bad news, but the window for being a fast follower is closing. The firms already rethinking their operational engines (April shared their categorization: client demand, talent matching, qualification, rebook/retention, and yes, finance) are building moats that will be hard to replicate.
The finance engine (invoicing, collections, cash application, dispute management) was called out explicitly as one of the workflow areas ripe for this kind of rethinking. Repetitive, manual, scripted tasks will be delegated to effective, efficient technology, while human relationships will remain core to the work your team performs. At Cartwheel, that's exactly what we're building toward: removing manual friction in AR (accounts receivable) so your finance team can focus on the relationships, strategy, and judgment calls that actually require a human.
The fastest-growing staffing firms aren't just lucky, they're structurally different. SIA's data on the fastest-growing US staffing companies (2020–2024) show four-year CAGR (compound annual growth rate) ranges of 54% to 84%, all achieved during one of the most volatile periods in the industry's history. These firms are predominantly in healthcare and niche industrial segments, and seemingly share a bias toward operational clarity and speed.
Meanwhile, staffing executives are more optimistic about where things are headed than where they are right now. This is illustrated by the SIA Confidence Index, which currently sits at 116.7 (above the post-pandemic average of 113.2) and is forecasted to lift to 128.0 as we move through 2026. The delta between current conditions and future expectations is an invitation (or a challenge) to leaders to prepare now, and not wait.
On the AI side, the data is sobering but clarifying. SIA reported that 95% of GenAI pilots deliver no measurable P&L impact, 42% of companies abandon AI initiatives, and 74% struggle to scale AI value. The firms that will accelerate aren't the ones deploying the most AI; they're the ones deploying the right AI for the right problems with the right change management powering it.
The operational implication: Every dollar your finance team spends chasing invoices, reconciling payments, or manually applying cash is a dollar not spent on growth. As technology spending in staffing is projected to increase 10% in 2026, the question isn't whether to invest; it's where the investment will actually show up in your P&L. AR automation isn't glamorous, but it's one of the clearest paths to cash flow predictability and clear operational ROI in a market where margin compression is real, slow pay remains stubbornly persistent, and technology ROI can be hard to decipher.
Here's the honest version of what we took from the conference:
The staffing industry is at an inflection point. The firms that will thrive are the ones that adapt to a genuinely new market structure, align their internal operations to support faster, leaner execution, and accelerate by making smart, targeted investments across their business (not by chasing shiny objects).
At Cartwheel, we sit squarely in the operational layer of this picture. We exist because staffing firms shouldn't need large back-office AR teams just to collect the money they've already earned. The industry is placing workers, delivering value, and generating revenue, but too often, that revenue is slow to convert to cash, bogged down in manual processes, aging invoices, and opaque client billing relationships.
In a market where margins are thin, growth is hard, and every operational dollar counts, getting AR right isn't a back-office concern. It's a strategic one.
We left Austin energized. There's real momentum building in this industry, and we're here to make sure your finance engine can keep up with it.
Cartwheel helps staffing firms simplify accounts receivable–from invoicing to collections to cash flow visibility.
If you're looking to tighten your back office without adding headcount, we'd love to talk.