Labour Market Intelligence Insights​ ​Q2 2026

WEC Publishes Q2 2026 Labour Market Intelligence Insights: Divergence, Fragility and the Shifting Role of Staffing

New quarterly report maps global labour market conditions as GDP projections are revised downward and agency work recovery remains uneven

Published on 18th June 2026

The World Employment Confederation has published its Q2 2026 edition of the Labour Market Intelligence Insights (LMI), its quarterly data publication tracking economic conditions, hiring trends and agency work activity across more than 40 countries worldwide.

The Q2 2026 report arrives at a moment of heightened complexity for global labour markets. Geopolitical tensions, particularly the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, are driving energy price increases and renewed inflationary pressure, contributing to a downward revision of global GDP growth projections from 3.4% to 2.6% for 2026, according to IMF and OECD data.

Labour markets in a rebalancing phase

Despite cooling vacancy rates across most advanced economies, labour demand remains structurally resilient. Unfilled job vacancies are beginning to bottom out in several markets, with early recovery signals in the United States, Finland, Portugal and Switzerland. Germany and Austria, however, continue to show subdued hiring activity despite modest GDP growth, pointing to a lagged transmission from output recovery to labour demand that is a recurring theme across this edition of the report.

At the sectoral level, service-oriented hiring is proving more resilient than cyclical industries. Administrative and support services and human health and social work are seeing renewed hiring pressure in the EU, while manufacturing and financial services remain soft.

Agency work: gradual but fragile recovery

Agency work activity data from WEC members indicates a continued but uneven recovery. Canada posted a 7.4% year-on-year increase in hours worked by agency workers in Q1 2026, with Chile up 6.4% and the US up 3.7%. Europe overall registered modest growth of 1.2%, though this masks significant country-level variation: Spain and Denmark are showing positive momentum, while the Netherlands, Ireland and parts of Western Europe remain in negative territory.

Online job postings for agency work grew globally by 10% year-on-year in Q1 2026, with Asia recording the strongest expansion at +179%, driven by a combination of genuine market activity and improving data coverage across APAC countries.

Strategic implications for the industry

The Q2 2026 report introduces a new business impact framework, offering direct implications for staffing firms across three dimensions: strategic positioning, business model adaptation, and service evolution. Key themes include the growing importance of flexible workforce solutions as clients delay permanent hiring decisions, the rising relevance of multi-country operating models, and the opportunity to position staffing firms as labour market intermediaries rather than transactional suppliers.

Self-employment is also on the rise globally, driven by platform work growth, post-pandemic labour market reconfiguration, and a mix of flexibility-pull and job-quality-push factors, creating both competitive pressure and new service opportunities for the industry around employer-of-record and compliance solutions.

The WEC Labour Market Intelligence Insights is published quarterly and draws on data from WEC members, Eurostat, the IMF, the OECD, Lightcast and other authoritative sources.

Questions ?

Contact: Viktorija Proskurovska, Labour Market Intelligence Manager Email

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