India’s formal flexi staffing workforce grew 2.6% sequentially and 7.5% year on year in the April to June quarter of 2026, with the total reaching 1.95 million workers, according to the latest quarterly report by the Indian Staffing Federation (ISF).
The ISF added 1.14 lakh formal jobs over the past year. General staffing growth this quarter came mainly from manufacturing and the consumer, retail and telecom verticals. The report was based on a quarterly survey of more than 120 ISF member staffing companies across 15 sectors, with inputs collected through primary email surveys over 60 days.
The sequential growth marks a recovery from a softer previous quarter. Manufacturing-sector flexi hiring rose 14%, IT staffing 7% year on year and healthcare hiring 22%. BFSI hiring shifted away from traditional banking roles toward insurance and fintech, while demand from Global Capability Centres (GCCs) and the BPO sector surged.
The data is a change from the previous quarter’s trajectory. The ISF Q1 FY26 report had flagged 6.1% year-on-year growth as “the slowest Q1 pace since the pandemic,” with ISF President Lohit Bhatia observing: “The April to June quarter indicates the changing face of formal employment growth, evidenced by a deceleration in flexi employment growth to 6.1 per cent year-on-year, the slowest Q1 pace since the pandemic.”
Flexi staffing covers the temporary hiring of employees by an organisation either for a fixed period or until a project is completed, usually through a third-party staffing firm that becomes the employer of record.
The sector’s contribution to India’s organised employment has grown over the past decade, with roughly 6.8 million people now working under formal contract arrangements across the broader industry, per earlier ISF estimates. The ISF has projected the total formal flexi workforce to reach 9.16 million by FY27.
