In live job ads pulled on 5 November 2026, agencies or recruiters had posted 144 of 150 German warehouse and factory ads, at least 8 in 10 in the Netherlands, Italy, Poland and the UK, and 37 of 44 German accountant ads.

Between the company car and the 30 days of holiday, a cleaning firm hiring in Trier lists one more perk, in capital letters: "KEINE Zeitarbeit". No agency work. You would be hired directly.

It is an odd thing to boast about, until you look at who writes the other ads. If you answer a warehouse or factory job ad online in Europe this month, as distribution centres staff up for Christmas, it was very likely not written by the company whose boxes you will move. A staffing agency or a recruiter wrote it, and often the agency, not the factory, will be your employer.

I had an AI agent read about 1,500 live job ads on teppek in seven European countries, from German forklift jobs to Dutch finance clerks, and sort them by two questions: who posted this ad, and who will actually employ the person hired? The answer was more lopsided than I expected, and it is not only a blue-collar story.

Finding 1: in warehouse ads, the middleman does the talking

On 5 November 2026, agencies or recruiters had posted 144 of 150 German warehouse and factory ads on teppek, 48 of 50 in the Netherlands, 37 of 45 in Poland and 30 of 37 in the UK.

At least 8 in 10 warehouse and factory ads come from an agency or recruiter

Pickers, forklift drivers, machine operators: in Germany at most six of the 150 ads came from the company where the work is done. Nearly half open with some version of "für unseren Kunden", for our client, who usually stays unnamed until you apply.

This is not one agency flooding the board. The German ads came from 55 different advertisers. Italy needed a closer look, because one agency network posted almost half of its ads; set it aside and 27 of the remaining 28 still came from agencies. In France a single network dominated even more, so France stays out of the count.

The pay looks standardised too. Among German agency ads that state an hourly rate, the most common figure is €15.33, and it appears in ads from 17 different agencies. That is about €1.40 above the €13.90 legal minimum. When 17 competitors quote the same cent, you are looking at a shared pay scale rather than a market price. One likely reason, which the ads alone cannot prove: German temp agencies largely pay by a sector-wide collective agreement, and more than two dozen of the agency ads I read mention that "Tarif".

Finding 2: office jobs go through middlemen too, but your boss changes

37 of 44 German accounting and bookkeeping ads and 43 of 50 Dutch finance and admin ads on teppek were posted by agencies or recruiters.

In Germany the middleman stays, but only accountants are told the client will hire them

I expected the middlemen to thin out at the desk. They barely did. What changes is the job the middleman does.

In the German accountant ads, 9 of 44 say in their opening lines that this is "Direktvermittlung": the recruiter finds you, the client hires you, and the agency steps out. Among the 150 warehouse and factory ads, not one says that.

The split runs through a single firm. The busiest agency in my German samples offers accountants "Direktvermittlung" and warehouse staff "Arbeitnehmerüberlassung", the legal term for being employed by the agency and lent out to the client.

So "who is your boss?" has a collar-shaped answer. For the accountant, the agency is a matchmaker. For the forklift driver, the agency is the employer. Temp work follows the same line. Among 187 German ads about agency employment, only about 1 in 10 is an office job; the rest are factory, warehouse, building, care or cleaning work. The UK is different: about 1 in 4 of its agency temp ads is for an office, from payroll assistants to executive assistants.

Finding 3: permanent, but with whom?

In Germany, 31 of 187 agency ads offered an open-ended contract with the agency itself and 23 mentioned a chance of being hired by the client; in the UK, 33 of 131 agency temp ads said the job could become permanent.

Permanent, but with whom? German agency ads promise a job at the agency more often than one at the client

The stepping stone, the idea that temping gets your foot in the door, is the agencies' best argument. In the ads it is a minority promise: about 1 in 8 in Germany and 1 in 4 in the UK. It is also written softly. An "Option auf Übernahme", a "gute Übernahmechance", "Temporary to Permanent", "with the potential to go permanent". An option, a chance, a potential.

Germany adds a twist. About 1 in 6 German agency ads offers security, just not at the factory: "Unbefristete Festanstellung im Rahmen der Arbeitnehmerüberlassung", a permanent job as a leased worker. You stay on the agency's payroll for good, and the agency decides where you go next. One ad even promises a "Wechselgarantie", a swap guarantee: if you are unhappy at the client, they move you somewhere else.

In Italy, two agencies write the bridge into their standard contract line. They describe their placements, again and again, as an "iniziale contratto di somministrazione, con scopo assunzione diretta in azienda": an initial agency contract, with the aim of direct hire by the company. Aim, not promise.

What it means

If you are looking for work:

  • Read the first lines for the contract model. In Germany, "Arbeitnehmerüberlassung" means the agency employs you and "Direktvermittlung" means the client will. In Italy, look for "somministrazione"; in the UK, "temp to perm".
  • If the ad mentions a route onto the client's payroll, ask what triggers it and when, and get it in writing. In these ads it was an option or a chance, not a contract term.
  • A permanent agency contract gives you security of pay, not of place. German law limits how long you can be lent to one company and when you must be paid like its own staff, so ask the agency where your assignment stands on both.

If you hire:

  • If an agency writes your ads, candidates may never see your name. When at least 8 in 10 warehouse ads come through a middleman, and in Germany almost all of them, "direct hire" is a selling point. That is the point the cleaning firm in Trier makes when it prints "KEINE Zeitarbeit" in capitals.
  • For office roles, candidates expect a recruiter in the middle. The question they will ask is whether the road ends on your payroll.

How I did it

The setup is one line in Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http teppek https://mcp.teppek.com/mcp

Any agent that speaks MCP can do the same. Searching needs no account.

Then I asked, in plain language:

  • "Show me live warehouse, forklift and factory job ads in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, the UK, France and Spain, searching each country in its own language."
  • "Do the same for accountants in Germany and finance and admin clerks in the Netherlands."
  • "For each ad: did the company where the work is post it, or an agency or recruiter?"
  • "Among agency ads, which ones promise a permanent job, and with whom?"

Behind those questions the agent called two tools. search_listings returns matching ads 50 at a time for a country and a set of keywords; get_listing opens a single ad, which I used to check pay figures and to find the city pages linked below. The agent then read the opening lines of every ad and sorted them.

The rules I applied:

  1. Count advertisers. Where one advertiser posted more than 4 in 10 of a country's sample, the country's share is not reported as a finding. Italy is shown without its largest advertiser; France and Spain are left out.
  2. When in doubt, count it as direct. If an ad's opening did not show that an agency or recruiter posted it, it counts as a direct employer.
  3. Only what the ad says up front. The text available is the opening of each ad, so "mentions" means mentioned in the first lines.
  4. Only stated pay. Hourly rates come from employer-stated pay; estimated salaries were dropped.
  5. No names. Agencies and employers are described, never named.

Try it yourself

Connect the endpoint above and ask your own version: "Who is posting the forklift jobs around Berlin this week, agencies or employers?" or "Which agency ads near me promise a permanent job with the client?" You can also browse areas on the map, for example jobs in Berlin Reinickendorf or Lauf an der Pegnitz. Search works without an account. With the user's permission (OAuth), an agent can also message the people behind a listing or post one; the setup is described at https://www.teppek.com/auth.md.

If you would rather not set anything up, tell me a job and a city in the comments and I will check who is posting the ads for it this week.

Methodology

  • Date: live job ads on teppek, pulled 5 November 2026; the ads were posted between 6 October and 4 November 2026.
  • Countries: findings for Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom; France and Spain were pulled and left out because one advertiser posted most of each sample.
  • Warehouse and factory samples: the first results of a search for the main job titles in each country's language (picker, forklift driver, warehouse worker, machine operator, production worker): Germany 150, Netherlands 50, Italy 50, Poland 45 and the UK 37 after removing managers and shop-floor retail roles.
  • Office samples: Germany 44 accounting and bookkeeping ads; Netherlands 50 finance and admin ads.
  • Agency-work samples: Germany 187 ads that mention agency employment or a staffing firm; UK 131 agency ads that describe the job as temporary.
  • Classification: an ad counts as agency or recruiter when the advertiser is a staffing, recruitment or placement firm or the ad says it is hiring for a client; otherwise it counts as direct. Job type comes from the job title.
  • Advertisers: Germany warehouse sample 55 advertisers, largest 23 of 150; Netherlands largest 6 of 50; Poland largest 14 of 45; UK largest 6 of 37; Italy largest 22 of 50, shown without it (27 of 28); German agency-work sample 65 advertisers, largest 26 of 187; UK agency temp sample 75 advertisers, largest 17 of 131.
  • Pay: German hourly rates from employer-stated pay only, 90 agency ads; €13.90 is Germany's statutory minimum wage for 2026.
  • Limits: one day of data, not a trend; samples are the first results of a search, not random; only the opening of each ad (about 500 characters) was read, so promises made further down are missed and every "mentions" figure is a minimum; the ads come from job boards and carry a salary figure, and agencies post often on job boards, so the shares describe these live ads, not every vacancy in a country (jobs filled through company websites, word of mouth or public job centres are not all here).

How to cite

Source: teppek live listings, pulled 5 November 2026 (https://www.teppek.com)

Frequently asked questions

How many warehouse job ads in Europe come from agencies?
In live ads on teppek on 5 November 2026, agencies or recruiters posted 144 of 150 German warehouse and factory ads, 48 of 50 in the Netherlands, 37 of 45 in Poland and 30 of 37 in the UK. In Italy, 27 of 28 came from agencies once the largest advertiser was set aside.

Are office jobs also filled through agencies?
Mostly, in these ads: 37 of 44 German accounting ads and 43 of 50 Dutch finance and admin ads came from agencies or recruiters. The difference is the model: 9 of the 44 German accountant ads said "Direktvermittlung" (the client hires you), while none of 150 warehouse ads did.

Do agency jobs lead to a permanent job?
Sometimes, and the ads say so softly. 23 of 187 German agency ads mentioned a chance of being hired by the client and 33 of 131 UK agency temp ads said "temporary to permanent". In Germany, 31 of 187 offered an open-ended contract with the agency itself.

Originally published at teppek Insights, with charts and the full data note.