Recruitment agencies in the UK ranked by number of employees

How this list was made

Industry

Companies with any of these SIC codes on their Companies House record:

• 78100 – Activities of employment placement agencies
• 78109 – Other activities of employment placement agencies
• 78200 – Temporary employment agency activities
• 78300 – Human resources provision and management of human resources functions

Location

The whole UK: every company on the register, wherever its registered office is.

Periods compared

Each company's latest annual accounts. The previous year's figure is shown for context and does not affect the ranking.

Ranking

Ranked by the average number of employees in the latest filed accounts. Companies with fewer than 10 employees are left out.

Exclusions

Companies that are dissolved, in liquidation, in administration or proposed to be struck off; dormant companies; and companies whose latest accounts end more than 21 months before the newest accounts in the data (or are dated after it). Figures that cannot be right, which are most likely filing errors, are also left out:

• an employee number identical to the net assets figure, or above 100,000
• more employees than the company's accounts category allows (micro: 50, small: 250, with a margin)
• less than £5,000 of turnover per employee, or a round number of thousands with no turnover to check it against

Companies checked

Companies with a matching SIC code in the UK81,424

Not active−17,460

Dormant−5,992

Latest accounts too old or wrongly dated−33,694

Average employees not filed in the latest accounts−6,354

Average employees below 10−15,083

Figure too large or inconsistent to be reliable−144

Qualified for this list2,697