If a staffing agency and an EOR both employ the worker, what's the difference?

Summary

Who finds the worker. A staffing agency recruits, screens, and hires people, then sends them to clients. An EOR employs someone you've already chosen, as the legal employer in that person's country. Either way your company directs the daily work, and in the US that can make you an employer too for discrimination and workplace-safety purposes.

Two different purchases

Say you've interviewed a developer in Lisbon and want her on your team next month. That's an EOR job: Remote's onboarding starts when you invite the employee to the platform, and Remote tells employees that their contract "will be with the local entity of Remote where you are based," which employs them "on behalf of the company you work for." Nobody at the EOR looked for her. The fee pays for employing her after you did.

Now say you need five extra people in a warehouse for the holiday season and have no candidates. That's staffing. The EEOC describes a temporary agency as one that "recruits, screens, hires, and sometimes trains its employees," sets and pays wages, withholds taxes and social security, and provides workers' compensation. The client "typically controls the individual's working conditions, supervises the individual, and determines the length of the assignment."

How the US classifies them

The federal industry codes (NAICS 2022) keep these apart.

There is no code for employer of record. It shares the employing role with the first and third, and drops the recruiting that defines the first.

Who counts as the employer

The EEOC's 1997 guidance on staffing firms (Notice 915.002) doesn't ask who signs the paycheck. It asks who has "the right to exercise control over the worker's employment." If both the staffing firm and the client have it, they are "joint employers," and the guidance says a client of a temporary agency "typically qualifies as an employer of the temporary worker during the job assignment."

Liability runs both ways, on different terms. The staffing firm is liable "if it knew or should have known about the client's discrimination and failed to undertake prompt corrective measures within its control." The client can be liable even if it isn't an employer, when its conduct interferes with the worker's opportunities at the staffing firm and it has enough employees to be covered by the law in question. The guidance says it does "not have the force and effect of law," and also that it "will remain in effect until rescinded or superseded."

OSHA is blunter. "The staffing agency and the staffing agency's client (the host employer) are joint employers of temporary workers and, therefore, both are responsible for providing and maintaining a safe work environment." Training, hazard communication, and recordkeeping are shared duties.

Neither agency mentions EORs. Both tests turn on who directs the work, though, and with an EOR that's you.

Sources

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Page last updated 2026-09-28. Sources are listed per figure and labeled statutory or payroll reference. Rates last verified 2026-08-21. This is not legal, tax or payroll advice and we do not file anyone's payroll.

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