Global Hiring Trends — Expertini Platform Data Divisópolis

Data Sources and Methodology

Primary data sources used in this report: Expertini platform analytics (2026); World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2023; LinkedIn Global Talent Trends 2024; SHRM State of the Workforce 2023; OECD Employment Outlook 2023; ManpowerGroup Talent Shortage Survey 2023; Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2023; national labour statistics agencies (BLS US, ONS UK, Destatis Germany, ABS Australia).

The Global Labour Market in 2026: An Overview

The global labour market in 2026 continues to be shaped by the intersection of three forces whose individual effects are well-understood but whose combined dynamics remain genuinely difficult to predict: structural technology disruption (particularly the accelerating deployment of generative AI across knowledge work), demographic divergence between ageing workforce markets (Western Europe, Japan, South Korea) and young, growing workforce markets (Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Middle East), and the uneven normalisation of hybrid and remote work arrangements that fundamentally altered geographic labour market boundaries from 2020 onward.

The apparent paradox of simultaneous high unemployment and widespread talent shortage — visible across most developed economies — reflects a structural skills mismatch rather than a simple demand deficit. Employers in technology, healthcare, engineering, and green energy sectors report critical difficulty filling roles; simultaneously, workers in sectors undergoing automation-driven contraction (certain administrative, routine data processing, and predictable manual tasks) face genuine displacement risk. The global labour market is not tight or loose — it is bifurcated, with conditions varying dramatically by sector, skill level, and geography.

Sources: ILO World Employment and Social Outlook 2024; ManpowerGroup Global Talent Shortage Survey 2023; World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2023.

Technology Sector: From Boom to Recalibration

The technology sector experienced the most dramatic hiring cycle reversal in the 2022–2024 period of any major employment sector. Following the pandemic-era hyper-growth hiring phase (2020–2022), in which technology companies globally expanded headcount at rates that significantly outpaced product development needs, a sustained correction began in late 2022 and continued through 2023 with waves of workforce reductions at major technology companies totalling over 400,000 roles globally (Layoffs.fyi, 2023). This created the unusual market condition of high technology candidate supply — particularly in software engineering, product management, and data roles — coinciding with continued critical shortages in cybersecurity, AI/ML engineering, and cloud infrastructure.

Expertini's technology job category data shows a consistent pattern across the platform's UK, German, Australian, and US subdomains: application-to-opening ratios for mid-level software engineering roles reached 8–12:1 in 2023, compared to 2–3:1 in 2021, reflecting the supply-side increase from tech sector layoffs. Simultaneously, AI/ML engineering and cybersecurity roles maintained application-to-opening ratios of 2–4:1 — indicating continued genuine talent scarcity in these categories despite overall technology sector supply improvement. This bifurcation within a single sector is the central challenge for technology employers in the current market: the talent you need is still scarce; the talent you don't need is abundant.

The emergence of generative AI capability is creating a skills adjacency demand — employers increasingly seek candidates who can work effectively with AI tools, prompt engineer, validate AI outputs, and integrate AI into existing workflows — that cuts across occupational categories and has not yet produced a clearly labelled job market category. This is visible in Expertini's job description analysis as a significant increase in keyword mentions of "GPT," "LLM," "prompt engineering," and "AI integration" in job descriptions outside the AI/ML sector, appearing in marketing, legal, finance, and operations roles where AI tool proficiency was not previously mentioned.

Sources: Layoffs.fyi aggregate data 2023; LinkedIn Talent Trends 2024 Technology sector report; Expertini platform job category analytics; BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook 2024.

Healthcare and Life Sciences: Structural Shortage Without Resolution

Healthcare workforce shortage is the longest-running and most geographically consistent talent crisis in global labour market data. The WHO projected a global shortage of 10 million health workers by 2030 — a figure that pre-dates the pandemic-era attrition wave that materially worsened the supply position across developed economies between 2020 and 2023.

Expertini's healthcare job category data, drawn from postings across its UK, Australian, Canadian, South African, and Indian subdomains, shows persistently high application-to-opening ratios for nursing roles (1.2–2.0:1), physician specialist roles (0.8–1.4:1), and allied health therapy roles (1.0–1.8:1) — indicating that qualified candidate supply is insufficient relative to open positions across all three categories. This is not a geographic outlier; it is consistent across every major market in the network. The only healthcare categories showing adequate candidate supply in Expertini's data are health administration roles (application-to-opening ratios of 4–6:1) and non-clinical healthcare support roles.

The structural driver of this shortage — a combination of training pipeline inadequacy, scope-of-practice regulatory constraints, international migration policy variability, and workforce burnout driving early career exit — is not amenable to short-term market solutions. Employers in healthcare hiring should plan on extended time-to-fill for clinical roles (median 45–90 days versus 28–35 days for non-clinical office roles), invest in candidate pipeline building through graduate and student outreach programmes, and consider international recruitment pathways that are legal, ethical, and compliant with the WHO Code of Practice on international recruitment of health personnel.

Sources: WHO Health Workforce 2030 Report; NHS Workforce Statistics UK 2024; Expertini platform healthcare job analytics; AHPRA Australia registration data 2024.

The Remote Work Settlement: What the Data Actually Shows

The remote work debate — full remote versus hybrid versus return-to-office — has generated more heat than light in business media coverage. The actual data presents a more nuanced picture than either the "remote is permanent" or "office is back" narratives suggest.

Expertini's platform data shows a consistent pattern across markets: remote job postings peaked in 2022 and have declined as a percentage of total postings since, but have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. The dominant employment arrangement in 2024 for office-capable roles in developed markets is structured hybrid — typically 2–3 days in office with 2–3 days remote — which represents a genuine structural change from pre-pandemic norms rather than a temporary accommodation that has been reversed.

The implication for employers is important: candidates now evaluate remote work flexibility as a standard employment expectation rather than a benefit. Gallup's 2023 State of the Global Workplace found that 60% of hybrid workers and 54% of fully remote workers in their survey would prefer to find new employment rather than accept a mandatory full-time return to office — a stated preference that translates into meaningful turnover risk for employers who remove hybrid flexibility without compensating adjustment.

Sources: Expertini platform remote/hybrid job category analytics; Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2023; LinkedIn Global Talent Trends 2024; BLS American Time Use Survey 2023.

Emerging Markets: The Underreported Hiring Story

The global hiring narrative is disproportionately shaped by data from five markets — the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Canada — that collectively represent less than 15% of the global working-age population. Expertini's presence across 150+ countries provides visibility into hiring dynamics in markets that receive far less analytical attention in HR and business media.

Sub-Saharan Africa presents the most significant structural hiring story of the next decade. The continent has the world's youngest median age (19.7 years versus 38.5 in Europe), the fastest-growing urban professional workforce, and a rapidly expanding technology sector concentrated in Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Accra, and Cairo. Expertini's African subdomain network shows consistent year-on-year growth in technology, finance, and logistics job postings, with application-to-opening ratios for technology roles suggesting emerging talent competition even in markets with high overall unemployment.

South and Southeast Asia continues to show strong demand in technology outsourcing, manufacturing, and export-oriented professional services. India's technology sector, despite broader global tech hiring corrections, maintained positive net hiring growth through 2023 due to domestic digital transformation demand and continued global remote hiring of Indian technology professionals by US and European employers.

The Middle East — particularly the UAE, Saudi Arabia (Vision 2030 transformation), and Qatar (post-World Cup economic diversification) — shows significant demand growth in technology, finance, engineering, and healthcare, driven by deliberate government-led economic diversification programmes creating new employer categories in markets previously dominated by oil and gas sector employment.

Sources: African Development Bank Labour Market Outlook 2023; NASSCOM India IT-BPM Sector Report 2024; UAE Ministry of Human Resources Annual Report 2023; Expertini regional subdomain analytics.

Skills Demand Shifts: What Employers Are Actually Asking For

Analysis of job description content across Expertini's platform reveals several significant shifts in skills demand patterns between 2021 and 2026 that are directionally consistent with external research:

Sources: Expertini platform job description NLP analytics (2026); LinkedIn Emerging Jobs Report 2024; WEF Future of Jobs Report 2023; SHRM HR Technology Survey 2024.

Time-to-Fill Benchmarks by Role Category and Region

Time-to-fill — the number of calendar days from job posting to accepted offer — is one of the most practically useful hiring metrics for benchmark calibration. Employers with unrealistic time-to-fill expectations either underspend on recruitment (accepting extended vacancies) or overspend (using expensive channels for roles that would fill organically with adequate time). The following benchmarks are compiled from SHRM research, Expertini platform data, and regional HR association surveys:

Sources: SHRM Talent Acquisition Benchmarking Report 2023; CIPD Resourcing and Talent Planning Survey 2023; Expertini platform application-to-offer timing analytics; LinkedIn Talent Solutions Recruiting Benchmarks 2024.

Salary and Compensation Trends: The Normalisation After the Peak

The 2021–2022 period produced exceptional salary growth across professional sectors in most developed economies — driven by acute talent scarcity, historically low unemployment, and heightened candidate expectations following the pandemic labour market reassessment. In 2023 and into 2026, salary growth has moderated significantly, though not uniformly.

Key patterns across Expertini's salary benchmark data and external sources: Technology sector median salaries, which grew 18–25% in many markets between 2020 and 2022, moderated to 3–7% growth in 2023 and are projected to continue moderating as candidate supply in non-specialist technology roles has improved. Healthcare salaries have continued to grow above headline inflation in most markets, driven by structural scarcity, with nursing and specialist physician compensation in particular markets reaching historically high levels relative to median wages. Finance and professional services salaries have largely tracked headline inflation post-2022 correction, with notable exceptions in ESG-focused roles and risk/compliance roles where demand continues to outpace supply.

The salary transparency trend — driven by mandatory pay range disclosure legislation in New York, Colorado, California, Illinois, and increasingly other US states, the EU Pay Transparency Directive, and strong candidate preference — is materially changing employer behaviour on Expertini's platform. Job postings with salary data on Expertini increased by approximately 34% between 2021 and 2026, consistent with the broader market trend. Research by Appcast (2022) found that listings with salary ranges received 30% more applications than equivalent listings without — a finding that has influenced employer posting behaviour across the network.

Sources: Expertini platform salary inclusion analytics; US Bureau of Labor Statistics Employer Costs for Employee Compensation 2023; EU Pay Transparency Directive 2023; ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings UK 2023; Appcast 2022 Recruitment Marketing Benchmark Report.

What Employers Should Do with This Data

Global hiring trends data is most useful when treated as a calibration input rather than a directive. The following practical applications are the most defensible uses of the patterns described in this report:

• Benchmark your time-to-fill against sector and role category norms. If your actual fill times are consistently above the benchmarks in this report, investigate process factors before increasing advertising spend. Advertising spend solves candidate supply problems; it cannot solve process friction, compensation competitiveness gaps, or interview experience quality issues.
• Audit your remote work policy against candidate expectations. The data is consistent: candidates in office-capable roles expect hybrid flexibility as a baseline. Positions that require full-time office attendance without a compelling justification will face a structurally wider candidate pool problem than comparable roles offering hybrid flexibility.
• Include salary ranges in job postings. The evidence for improved application rates with salary transparency is strong and consistent across multiple independent studies. Salary transparency legislation is also expanding rapidly across markets. Getting ahead of compliance requirements while improving application rates is a rare case where regulatory compliance and commercial interest point in the same direction.
• Invest in skills-based hiring for emerging technology roles. The AI/ML, cybersecurity, and cloud infrastructure skills shortages are structural and will not resolve on short timelines. Employers who develop internal upskilling pathways and evaluate candidates on demonstrated skills (project portfolios, open source contributions, technical assessments) rather than credentials and prior employer names will access a wider qualified candidate pool than those requiring specific credentials that are currently in critically short supply.
• Use multi-channel distribution rather than platform concentration. SHRM research consistently finds that employers using three or more sourcing channels achieve lower cost-per-hire than those concentrated on one or two platforms. Expertini's free multi-country distribution, combined with targeted paid search via Google Ads and Microsoft Ads integrations and selective use of LinkedIn for senior roles, represents a multi-channel approach that is achievable at moderate total cost.

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