I think contract workers now belong in the workforce plan HR owns, counted and skilled and reviewed alongside employees. A survey released on November 11 by Express Employment Professionals and The Harris Poll shows how far contract labour has moved from a stopgap into the core staffing plan, and most HR planning still treats it as somebody else’s spreadsheet.
What the survey found
According to the release, 71% of U.S. companies build contract workers into their staffing strategies, and 80% of hiring managers say they are likely to hire them in the future. Eighty-two percent of hiring managers say their company has employed contract workers, including 57% that currently do. Hiring managers estimate that contract workers complete an average of 11% of the work at U.S. companies.
Reliance is growing. Among hiring managers whose companies have used contract workers, 43% say their organizations rely on this talent more than they did three years ago, and 82% call contract workers critical to their company’s ability to respond to uncertainty. Hiring intent has climbed too: one quarter of hiring managers planned to hire temporary or contract workers in the fall of 2026, compared with 16% in the spring of 2025.
The source deserves a caveat. Express is a staffing company, and contract staffing is what it sells. The Harris Poll ran the fieldwork online with 1,006 U.S. hiring decision-makers from May 13 to June 1, 2026, and with 1,000 job seekers from May 19 to June 8. I read the figures as a hiring manager’s view of the market, which is the view that matters for planning.
Bob Funk Jr., CEO, president and chairman of Express Employment International, said: “The way businesses plan for talent is evolving, and contract staffing is becoming an increasingly important part of that strategy.”
Why 11% of the work needs a plan
If roughly a ninth of the work is done by people outside the headcount, a workforce plan built only on employee records misses a ninth of the capacity it claims to plan. The gap shows up in three places HR cares about.
The first is skills. Employers in the survey most often value contract workers for bringing them in as needed (53%), easing heavy workloads (45%) and covering responsibilities while employees are on leave (43%). Those are skills and coverage decisions. When nobody records which skills arrived through contracts, the skills inventory HR builds for internal mobility undercounts what the company actually uses.
The second is performance. Eighty-four percent of hiring managers whose companies have used contract workers say there have been times when this talent outperformed full-time employees. That is a claim HR can test only if contract work is reviewed against the same outcomes as employee work.
The third is supply. More than half of job seekers (57%) have worked as contractors, and 72% of those not currently in a contract role express at least some interest in one. Among Gen Z job seekers not currently contracting, 80% are at least somewhat interested. A plan that sees contract roles can use them as a route to permanent hiring. A plan that cannot see them leaves that pipeline unmanaged.
The strongest objection
The best argument against my view is that contingent labour sits with procurement for good reasons. Procurement negotiates rates, manages supplier contracts and controls spend, and HR systems were built for employees. Pulling contractors into HR processes can also blur the line between a contractor and an employee, which carries legal weight. The UK is consulting on that line now, as we reported when the government opened its consultation on a presumption of worker status and less weight on personal service.
I accept most of that. Rates, supplier terms and invoices should stay with procurement, and nothing I am proposing changes how a contractor is engaged or supervised. Planning is a separate job from management. HR can count contract roles, record the skills they bring and track how long each one has run without directing anyone’s day. That separation is the reason to write it down: if the plan shows a contract role renewed for three years, HR and legal can look at it before a regulator or tribunal does.
What I would ask HR to do
First, add a contract column to the workforce plan: every active contract role, its function, its skills and its start date, refreshed each quarter from the vendor management or procurement system.
Second, agree with procurement on one shared definition of a contract role, so finance, HR and the business count the same people. Our earlier argument that contingent labour policy should name AI agents as requesters covers the next step, as automated requests start to book outside labour.
Third, set a review point for any contract role that passes 12 months, with a decision on whether it should become a permanent role, end, or continue with a stated reason.
If 80% of hiring managers expect to keep hiring contract workers, the plan should list those roles one by one before the next budget is set.
Source: Express Employment Professionals and The Harris Poll, PR Newswire.
