State-Level Staffing Industry Concentration Statistics (2026)

California and Texas, Side by Side

ASA’s own state fact sheets put California’s staffing footprint at 1,723,800 annual employment, 334,100 average weekly temp workers, $50.6 billion in 2023 payroll, and an estimated 3,940 offices. The top occupation groups are Transportation and Material Moving at 30%, Production at 14%, Office and Administrative Support at 10%, Business and Financial Operations at 8%, and Healthcare Practitioners and Technical at 5%.

Texas reports 1,369,200 annual employment, 265,300 average weekly temp workers, $12.9 billion in 2023 payroll, and an estimated 3,390 offices. Its occupation mix runs Transportation and Material Moving at 25%, Production at 14%, Office and Administrative Support at 13%, Construction and Extraction at 7%, and Business and Financial Operations at 7%.

The Concentration Ratio: Payroll Outpaces Office Count

Compare the two states directly and the concentration becomes clear. California runs roughly 3.9 times Texas’s staffing payroll, $50.6 billion versus $12.9 billion, while operating only about 16% more offices, 3,940 versus 3,390, and about 26% more annual employment, 1.72 million versus 1.37 million. That is VA Horizon’s own calculation from ASA’s published figures rather than a ratio ASA itself publishes, and it shows payroll concentrating in California far more than office count or headcount alone would suggest.

A comparably staffed office in California is, on this math, generating meaningfully more billing than a comparably staffed office in Texas, evidence the two states differ in revenue density per office, beyond their difference in overall scale.

The National Baseline Both States Sit Inside

The same ASA fact sheets carry an identical national sidebar: 2.2 million average weekly temporary and contract employees, an average tenure of 10.1 weeks, 11.2 million in annual employment, $124.0 billion in temp and contract staffing sales, and an estimated 38,250 offices nationally. California and Texas together account for roughly 7,330 of that 38,250 national office total, a meaningful share without dominating it outright.

A Data-Year Caveat Worth Flagging

The fact sheets themselves mix data years. Annual employment, average weekly worker counts, and sales figures are labeled 2024, while payroll and office-count figures are labeled 2023, per the sheet’s own footer sourcing. Do not read every number on this page as uniformly current to the same year, the sheets themselves do not present it that way. A stale-looking URL path on ASA’s own CDN does not signal stale content either. The file’s own copyright line and “2024 at a glance” label confirm current data despite the older-looking path segment.

The Limits of a Two-State Comparison

This page checks California and Texas specifically, the two largest state staffing economies, rather than a complete 50-state comparison. ASA publishes the identical fact sheet format for every state and Washington, D.C., through the same URL pattern, so a fuller concentration ranking is buildable, it simply was not pulled for every state in this pass.

The Numbers

Sources

The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.

• ASA, California Staffing Fact Sheet (PDF)
• ASA, Texas Staffing Fact Sheet (PDF)

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