Global recruitment company Spherion has confirmed that one of its temporary workers is still unaccounted for after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre.

In the confusion following the tragic events of 11 September, Spherion lost contact with 12 of its employees in lower Manhattan.

The company has now contacted all but one of these employees. It is now more than three weeks since the disaster and hopes are fading that rescuers will find more survivors.

A spokeswoman for the company said the missing man was a temporary worker with the company who was visiting a client on the 97th floor of World Trade Centre 2.

Spherion could not give details of his name, but the spokeswoman said he was working for the company’s financial division.

Company offices, adjacent to the two towers that collapsed, have been relocated elsewhere in New York.

Adecco confirmed that all its full-time employees in the city were safe, but said two temporary employees were still missing.

Manpower has confirmed that all 20 of its employees that worked in the World Trade Centre are safe.

But its offices on Wall Street and Broadway, about one and a half blocks from ‘ground zero’, will need repairs, and employees have been relocated to another facility elsewhere in Manhattan.

The US equivalent of the REC, the American Staffing Association, has launched an appeal to help bereaved families. It is working with staffing firms in New York and Washington, DC to identify families of assigned employees who were injured or killed at the World Trade Centre or the Pentagon.

A statement on the association’s website said: ‘We have received an outpouring of concern from staffing companies and their customers from across the nation and around the world.’

Robert Half, Management Recruiters International and Monster have also contributed to relief efforts following the attacks.