Explore jobs
Find specific jobs
Explore careers
Explore professions
Best companies
Explore companies
Job outlook for staffing specialists in the United States
Staffing specialist job growth summary. After extensive research, interviews, and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
The projected staffing specialist job growth rate is 8% from 2018-2028.
About 58,800 new jobs for staffing specialists are projected over the next decade.
Staffing specialist salaries have increased 7% for staffing specialists in the last 5 years.
There are over 47,944 staffing specialists currently employed in the United States.
There are 53,459 active staffing specialist job openings in the US.
The average staffing specialist salary is $44,939.
Are staffing specialist jobs in demand?
Staffing specialist job and salary trends over time
Staffing specialist jobs over time
Staffing specialist job growth rate over time
| Year | # of jobs | % of population |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 47,944 | 0.01% |
| 2020 | 42,524 | 0.01% |
| 2019 | 41,904 | 0.01% |
| 2018 | 39,672 | 0.01% |
| 2017 | 37,422 | 0.01% |
Average staffing specialist salary over time
Staffing specialist salary by year
| Year | Avg. salary | Hourly rate | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | $44,939 | $21.61 | +2.5% |
| 2024 | $43,828 | $21.07 | +1.7% |
| 2023 | $43,092 | $20.72 | +0.9% |
| 2022 | $42,717 | $20.54 | +2.0% |
| 2021 | $41,889 | $20.14 | +1.4% |
Staffing specialist jobs by state
Most common states for staffing specialists
| Rank | State | Population | # of jobs | Employment/ 1000ppl |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | District of Columbia | 693,972 | 237 | 34% |
| 2 | Delaware | 961,939 | 141 | 15% |
| 3 | New Hampshire | 1,342,795 | 170 | 13% |
| 4 | Massachusetts | 6,859,819 | 840 | 12% |
| 5 | Iowa | 3,145,711 | 384 | 12% |
| 6 | Nebraska | 1,920,076 | 230 | 12% |
| 7 | Alaska | 739,795 | 92 | 12% |
| 8 | North Dakota | 755,393 | 88 | 12% |
| 9 | Vermont | 623,657 | 76 | 12% |
| 10 | Wyoming | 579,315 | 70 | 12% |
| 11 | Maryland | 6,052,177 | 586 | 10% |
| 12 | Minnesota | 5,576,606 | 579 | 10% |
| 13 | Montana | 1,050,493 | 108 | 10% |
| 14 | Georgia | 10,429,379 | 902 | 9% |
| 15 | North Carolina | 10,273,419 | 894 | 9% |
| 16 | Colorado | 5,607,154 | 503 | 9% |
| 17 | Oregon | 4,142,776 | 391 | 9% |
| 18 | Kansas | 2,913,123 | 272 | 9% |
| 19 | South Dakota | 869,666 | 74 | 9% |
| 20 | Hawaii | 1,427,538 | 119 | 8% |
Most common cities for staffing specialists
| Rank | City | # of jobs | Employment/ 1000ppl | Avg. salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hagerstown | 3 | 7% | $46,991 |
| 2 | Brockton | 2 | 2% | $49,846 |
| 3 | Redwood City | 2 | 2% | $65,417 |
| 4 | Sioux City | 2 | 2% | $39,101 |
| 5 | Bakersfield | 2 | 1% | $64,725 |
| 6 | Baton Rouge | 2 | 1% | $38,108 |
| 7 | Hayward | 2 | 1% | $65,198 |
| 8 | Abilene | 1 | 1% | $46,449 |
| 9 | Albany | 1 | 1% | $52,997 |
| 10 | Los Angeles | 2 | 0% | $64,624 |
| 11 | Washington | 2 | 0% | $49,770 |
| 12 | Arlington | 1 | 0% | $42,505 |
| 13 | Atlanta | 1 | 0% | $36,953 |
| 14 | Aurora | 1 | 0% | $44,473 |
| 15 | Baltimore | 1 | 0% | $46,979 |
Staffing Specialist job outlook: Expert opinions
Our panel of staffing specialist experts
California State University - Fullerton
Marshall University
Indiana University Southeast
Land O Lakes
Grand Valley State University
University of Idaho
Adelphi University
Drexel University
Muhlenberg College
LIU-Brooklyn
The Pennsylvania State University
Emmaus Homes
East Tennessee State University
Michigan State University
Dr. April Bullock PhD
ChairCalifornia State University - Fullerton
Liberal Arts And Sciences, General Studies And Humanities
What Staffing Specialist skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Dr. April Bullock PhD: I THINK THAT THE ABILITY TO LEARN NEW THINGS AND TO KEEP UP WITH CHANGING TECHNOLOGIES AND WORKPLACE NORMS AND VALUES WITH BE VERY IMPORTANT IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS. LIBERAL ARTS MAJORS ARE GOOD AT LEARNING FROM A VARIETY OF TYPES OF SOURCES, FIELDS, AND WORLDVIEWS. THEY DEVELOP CULTURAL AWARENESS THAT SHOULD SERVE THEM WELL IN CHANGING WORKPLACES THAT VALUE DIVERSITY OF PERSONNEL AND OPINIONS. THE ABILITY TO LEARN AND ADAPT IS NOT ALWAYS THOUGHT OF AS A SKILLSET, BUT AS OUR SOCIETY AND WORKPLACES CHANGE MORE AND MORE RAPIDLY, IT IS A CRITICAL SKILL AND ONE THAT LIBERAL ARTS MAJORS HAVE DEVELOPED IN THEIR EDUCATION.
Ralph McKinney Ph.D.
Associate Professor of ManagementMarshall University
Health And Medical Administrative Services
What general advice would you give to a Staffing Specialist?
Ralph McKinney Ph.D.: When starting a career, as noted above, an individual needs to have a clear career plan that considers
how to balance the relationship between work and life. Planning helps individuals identify their
strengths and weaknesses along with their desires and expectations. By understanding your strengths
and weaknesses, you can better communicate your value as an employee. Likewise, understanding your
desires and expectations provides a general basis for negotiating a compensation package. It may not
necessarily be about maximizing the salary, but maximizing your needs and your long-term goals. For
example: You may be able to negotiate more paid time off rather than negotiating a higher salary.
Increasing your salary throughout your career means that you have value as an employee and that the
employer knows your contributions and your value. This means that you must be seen and heard. The
easiest way to be seen and heard is to showcase your efforts and accomplishments through feedback
sessions. As an employee, use the feedback sessions to illustrate your work as well as your efforts to
build your knowledge and skills. If a manager is unaware of your efforts, how can you be rewarded?
Additional credentials help build value and illustrate your commitment to the profession. Determine
which credentials are important to your career. Is it a master's degree or micro-credentials? How do
these fit within your plan? Perhaps the extra time off can be used to take educational courses. If an
employer is paying for education, this is a benefit that has exceptional value beyond the immediate
salary. The extra education can provide for greater upward mobility within the organization.
Dr. Gregory Kordsmeier
Director, Institute for Learning and TeachingIndiana University Southeast
Sociology
What Staffing Specialist skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Dr. Gregory Kordsmeier: Many employers are looking for the skills that sociology majors have developed over the course of their major, but many of these employers will not phrase it as looking for a sociology major. Skills like working in teams, data analysis and communication, written and oral visualization, and an ability to work with diverse populations are all prized by employers and common among sociology majors. Your job as a recent graduate is helping translate the work that you did and the skills you developed in college into terms that prospective employers can understand.
Philomena Morrissey Satre
Director of Diversity Equity & Inclusion and External Strategic PartnershipsLand O Lakes
What skills will help Staffing Specialists earn the most?
Philomena Morrissey Satre: Coachability: listen and receive feedback, communicate effectively, draw on Internship or prior job experience, show that you can manage multiple priorities, and willingness to learn and continue developing skills and manage multiple priorities. Additionally, care and compassion for all. Willingness to do what it takes to get the job done even when it may not be your favorite task or responsibility. Lastly, an innovative mindset!
Dan Wiljanen Ph.D.
Affiliate of Practice Professor, SHRM Student Chapter AdviserGrand Valley State University
Seidman College of Business
What hard/technical skills are most important for Staffing Specialists?
Dan Wiljanen Ph.D.: Knowledge of the HR Discipline
-Personnel and Human Resources - Knowledge of principles and procedures for personnel recruitment, selection, training, compensation and benefits, labor relations and negotiation, and personnel information systems.
-Administration and Management - Knowledge of business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, production methods, and coordination of people and resources.
-Law and Government - Knowledge of laws, government regulations, and executive orders.
-Education and Training - Knowledge of principles and methods for training design, implementation, and evaluation.
Technology Skills
-Enterprise resource planning ERP software
-Human resources software - Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS)
-Office suite software
-Project management software
-Web page creation and editing software
-Word processing software
Daniel Eveleth Ph.D.
Professor of Management and Human ResourcesUniversity of Idaho
Department of Business
What skills stand out on Staffing Specialist resumes?
Daniel Eveleth Ph.D.: Given this emphasis on the candidate, employee, and manager experiences, what skills are needed:
-Empathy skill - able to look at "our processes" through the eyes of the candidate, employee, manager. It is their journey, not our process.
-Relationship building - given the demand for talent, we often need to play the long game; rather than posting a job announcement and praying for applications to "process," we may need to develop connections with passive job seekers, for example, who may not be ready to apply; we need to think about how we reject candidates so that they pass on positive word of mouth to others and possibly reply/apply when a better fit appears. We may need to develop our relationships with hiring managers to help them make quicker hiring decisions, help them avoid biases when interviewing, learn more from them about their talent needs and preferences.
-Ability and willingness to search for talent. There are excellent job seekers who don't know your organization exists or that you have a culture, positions, etc., that would be a good fit. This is particularly critical for helping a company meet its DEI goals.
-Interpersonal communication skills:
-Job candidates prefer recruiters who are both warm/approachable and knowledgeable about the jobs and the company.
-Hiring managers and other business partners often have varying degrees of experience with recruiting, selection, onboarding, development practices and have unique needs and often unique personalities, work styles, etc. Communication with them is critical and sometimes includes having challenging conversations.
-Tools-oriented skills:
-Data analysis skills
-Journey/Experience mapping
-Data visualization (e.g., Tableau)
-Knowledge of applicant tracking systems
-Success using social media to engage followers (e.g., managed a fraternity's social media sites to engage alumni)
-Familiarity with managing conversations via remote technology.
-Interest in the company/industry.
What skills stand out on Staffing Specialist resumes?
Raghida Abdallah Yassine Ph.D.: The pandemic has been a major contributor to how work has changed and the type of skills and knowledge set that students may need to enter an ever-changing workforce. HR has played a major role during the pandemic and will continue to do so for many years to come. Universities need to understand this in order to provide the right set of skills for graduating students entering the workforce during challenging times.
How we recruit, train and manage the workforce has changed, and a reliance on technology has increased. Various softwares are available nowadays for different HR functions, and for students to succeed in the real world, they need to be exposed early on to different types of technology to make them more technology-savvy individuals. Business decisions are becoming more and more data-driven. Students who understand data analytics and how to use it to drive better decision-making have become indispensable skills. Additionally, understanding new laws and policies are always important, especially with the onset of remote work and the changing nature of benefits.
Some essentials skills that will help new graduates stand out are adaptability or the need to be resilient and cope with changes in a proactive manner, emotional intelligence, communication, and collaboration, especially in virtual environments, presentation skills, data literacy, critical thinking, strategic thinking as well as good time management. The ongoing desire for continuous learning is important as well. One thing that students can do is to be part of an HR society and get certified. They need to think of what will make them stand out in the crowd. Currently, they have the opportunity for continuous learning with MOOCs and other open courses available. The richer you are in terms of knowledge, the better your chances are of standing out in the crowd. Individuals who have a thirst for knowledge are more likely to succeed as it shows they want to evolve and keep moving forward in a fast-paced work environment.
Technology is changing at a fast pace as such, graduates need to be extremely tech-savvy in terms of social media platforms that can be used for recruitment purposes, artificial intelligence, and how it is used for various purposes, one of which is to also recruit individuals and the use of data to drive better decision making. Knowledge of various video conferencing software is important as well, especially with remote and virtual work scenarios. They must have the skills to manage a diverse workforce concerning remote work, flexible work arrangements, and other workforce categories. Understanding this means they need to understand diversity, equity, and inclusion to create policies and procedures that take into account the differences everyone brings with them to the office. This will also help them in making better strategic decisions in terms of what will help retain employees. After all, we know employee retention is key to company success, especially if these employees are committed and satisfied in the workplace.
Dr. Salvatore Falletta
Human Resource Development – Program DirectorDrexel University
Policy, Organization, and Leadership
Will there be an enduring impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Staffing Specialists?
Dr. Salvatore Falletta: The once-in-a-100-years pandemic namely, COVID-19, has been sweeping across our nation and the world. Uncertainty is at an all-time high, as we experience complete disruption of our daily activities and become more homebound. As a result, the way in which we work has changed rapidly. Working remotely has exponentially increased and technology is being leveraged like never before. Remote work will be the new normal for many organizations and industries including the HR profession, which in turn, will provide recent graduates and top talent with greater opportunities irrespective of geographical location and where they physically reside.
Ryan Smolko
Associate Director, Career CenterMuhlenberg College
The Career Center at Muhlenberg College
What's a good job out of college for Staffing Specialists?
Ryan Smolko: A good job out of college is one that integrates a students skillset with their larger value system. Students can see every job available with a click of a button so employers are doing a lot around showing their culture, mission and social responsibility in very genuine ways.
Will there be an enduring impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Staffing Specialists?
Herbert Sherman Ph.D.: The coronavirus has changed the way in which people work as well as the type of work that people will be performing by accelerating the use of technology to facilitate more employees working in a virtual setting and therein reducing the need for traditional office space or even shared workspace. Graduates with a degree in human resource management will need to not only be comfortable working remotely in a non-office environment but need to truly find a balance between work demands (which are now 24/7) and the ability to lose oneself within the comforts of one's home surroundings. Work-life balance will not only be of the utmost import for employees but for HR professionals as well.
Secondly, HR graduates, even if working in a traditional office setting, will be expected to be well versed in the use of HR analytics and HRIS packages (i.e. UKG Pro, TriNet, BambooHR, UKG Ready, Workday Human Capital Management, Ceridian Dayforce, Oracle Cloud HCM, ADP Workforce Now, Oracle PeopleSoft HCM, Paychex Flex, and Zenefits) which integrate HR functions including job analysis and job design, recruitment and selection of employees, training and development, performance management, compensation and benefits, and employee retention. HR graduates should also be quite comfortable using computer hardware and software that facilitate virtual meetings and conferences - in person job interviews may become the thing of the past and replaced with Zoom, Google Hangouts, Cisco Webex Meetings and even Skype or WhatsApp.
What skills stand out on Staffing Specialist resumes?
Elaine Farndale Ph.D.: An ability to be flexible and adaptable has to be a number one priority for most positions, particularly HR. This might be related to geographic flexibility, i.e., being willing to go where skills are needed, or flexibility of working hours or place of work (in an office or working from home). We have learned a lot about the advantages (e.g., reduced office space, meeting, and travel costs) and disadvantages (e.g., losing connections with co-workers, more complex people management, and productivity challenges) of remote working so businesses will be trying to continue to keep the advantages while removing the disadvantages once people can work on-site as well as remotely. HR professionals who can advise businesses through this balancing act will be invaluable.
Are there any particularly good places in the United States for Staffing Specialists to find work opportunities?
Elaine Farndale Ph.D.: The answer will lie in which states can recover from the pandemic the quickest, which is still very much unknown.
What skills stand out on Staffing Specialist resumes?
Tonya Courtois: To be most attractive to us a resume should be more than just a list of a person's work history and the skills they acquired while they occupied each role. A resume that will stand out to us, is a resume that tells us how a candidate problem-solved during their tenure at each job. We are also looking for candidates who closely align with our core value system. A one size fits all resume is not a best practice. Candidates should do their homework and clearly and specifically identify past behaviors that demonstrate they share our values. Resumes should be full of well-written examples of how they added value.
What Staffing Specialist skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Dr. James Lampley: I would encourage a graduate or graduate student to use the gap year experience to learn a new marketable skill or to work with under-served groups. Learn how to do something that not a lot of people can do.
What are the biggest trends we'll see in the Staffing Specialist job market given the pandemic?
Dr. James Lampley: Online delivery. Before the pandemic, we were already seeing a trend to more online programs. After we return to "normal" we will see online courses and online programs expand exponentially.
Will there be an increase or decrease in demand for Staffing Specialists in the next 5 years?
Dr. Phil Gardner Ph.D.: During the quarantine, we had strong demand for both interns and graduates - there were many programs at MSU that had many internships canceled due to covid. Americans now realize the importance of our food industry and supply chain as we all saw shortages in the stores - food production is essential. Areas such as poultry, swine, dairy and meat industry are winning the student recruitment battle because of competitive salaries. The demand for talent in production ag has been strong. We also have a few contract research organizations recruiting for study technicians. I predict that the trend of more animal science jobs than interested students will continue in the future.
Employers are offering jobs if students are doing a great job in their internship. MSU also had two-year programs offered through our Institute of Ag Technology, last fall. We had a first-year student get offered an internship in the fall with Kalmbach in Ohio, halfway through his summer internship, and he was offered a job. Because his courses are now online this semester, he is staying in Ohio, starting his new job, and finishing up his classes online.