Staffing agencies in Chicago: the market, the registry and how to vet one

This report is for Chicago-area operations and HR managers choosing an agency, people researching the local staffing market, and B2B sellers whose customers are staffing firms.

Chicago staffing agencies by the numbers

The figures cover the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN Metro Area (CBSA 16980) and two industry codes: NAICS 56131 (Employment Placement Agencies and Executive Search Services) and NAICS 56132 (Temporary Help Services).

The two codes behave very differently. Temp agencies employ the workers they place, so their headcount sits on the agency's books:

Average pay follows the same split: about $44,500 a year in temporary help against about $88,100 in placement and search, where most staff are recruiters rather than temps.

How big they are and where they are

In broader bands: 1,067 establishments have 1 to 19 employees, 370 have 20 to 99, and 270 have 100 or more. The published classes add up to 1,706. The 1,707th is a placement agency whose class the Census Bureau withholds (it publishes neither the 500 to 999 nor the 1,000-or-more cell for placement agencies here), so it has at least 500 employees but could sit in either of the top two rows.

"Withheld" means withheld by the Census Bureau to protect confidentiality. Cook County holds 56% of the locations but 47% of the employees. Will County averages 91 employees per location and Kane 107, against 43 in Cook: the outer counties are where the big temp branches serving warehouses and plants sit, while Cook has many small recruiting offices.

What these numbers leave out

County Business Patterns counts establishments with paid employees, not companies. A national agency with a dozen local branches counts a dozen times, and a one-person recruiter with no payroll doesn't count, because the self-employed are excluded. Employment is a snapshot of the week of March 12, which understates agencies that staff up for the fourth-quarter warehouse peak. Professional employer organizations (NAICS 56133) are not included, and a corporate head office is classified under NAICS 55, not staffing.

The kinds of agency you'll find

How to shortlist and vet an agency

1. Write the brief first. Role, shifts, headcount, start date, site and what your own employees earn for the same work.
2. Build a long list from public sources. IDOL publishes its registered agencies list (as of 1 October 2026 it has 469 agency records and 682 branch records, 93 of them at Chicago addresses). The American Staffing Association member directory filters by job field, such as industrial, health care and IT. The City of Chicago business license data can be filtered by the business activities "Commissioned Staffing of Professional, Secretarial and Clerical Work" and "Operation of Day Labor Agency".
3. Check registration before you sign. IDOL's FAQ says clients must verify a day and temporary labor agency is registered before contracting, and again every March 1 and September 1. Keep a dated screenshot.
4. Ask for the numbers separately: pay rate, markup, overtime, conversion fee and the rate after 720 hours (below).
5. Ask about safety. Illinois agencies must keep records of safety hazard training, and clients must share what the agency needs to train workers. Agree who trains and who supplies protective equipment.
6. Call two references at similar Chicago sites, then run a short pilot before you hand over your whole peak.

Worked example: pricing a 26-week assignment

Illustrative example. The company and rates are invented to show the arithmetic.

Prairie Dock Logistics (prairiedock.example) runs a distribution center in Will County and needs 12 pickers for 26 weeks at 40 hours a week: 1,040 hours each. The agency quotes a $20.00 pay rate with a 38% markup, a $27.60 bill rate. Prairie Dock's own pickers earn $22.00.

Under Illinois law, a temp assigned to one client for more than 720 hours in 12 months must get pay and benefits comparable to the client's direct employees in the same work. So the assignment has two prices:

Budgeting at a flat $27.60 gives $28,704.00 per worker. The real figure is $883.20 higher per worker, $10,598.40 across 12 pickers, before benefits or their cash equivalent. Ask every agency to quote the post-720-hour rate in writing.

Selling to Chicago staffing agencies

The market splits in two. Temp help branches, especially the large ones in Will, Kane and DuPage counties, buy for volume: payroll and timekeeping, background and drug screening, safety training, transport for workers, workers' compensation insurance and protective equipment. Placement and search offices, mostly small and in Cook County, buy recruiting tools: applicant tracking, job advertising, candidate data and office space.

A practical plan: filter the IDOL list to the counties you serve, split temp branches from placement offices, then read each agency's job postings. One posting dozens of forklift jobs in Joliet needs different things from a boutique placing accountants in the Loop. Pitch onboarding and safety tools in late summer, before the fourth-quarter peak. At volume, the research is the slow part; Bebop finds agencies that match a description, explains why each fits and drafts the opener. For list-building method, see how to build a prospect list, and research each account with the account research guide.

Subject: Safety training before your Q4 ramp

Hi [first name],

I saw [agency] is hiring [number] [role, e.g. forklift operators] for sites in [county] this month.

Illinois agencies have to keep records of safety hazard training for every placement, and in a ramp that paperwork lands on branch staff. We run [length] site-specific sessions and send the training records straight to your files.

Would a 15-minute call on [day] be useful to see whether it fits how [agency] onboards?

[Your name]

Local sources for names and checks

Next step: turn this market into a ranked list of accounts with how to build a prospect list.