2025 Annual Job Search Trends Report

Introduction

The 2025 job market tells a story not of a single shock, but of sustained drag and widening divides. Across the year, the median time to first offer lengthened relentlessly, from 57 days in Q1 to a punishing 83 days by Q4, stretching the job search into an endurance test, even as most candidates still secured initial interviews within days.

The real slowdown came later: once interest was established, offers stalled for nearly two weeks on average, bogged down by extra rounds, internal approvals, and coordination friction. Outcomes increasingly split along sharp lines, half of job seekers reached an interview within 23 days, while the slowest 10 percent waited more than four months, and nearly one in five had to send over 100 applications to land an offer.

Where candidates applied mattered as much as how often: niche platforms like Google Jobs, GovernmentJobs, and Wellfound delivered dramatically higher response rates than the largest boards, while hiring speed varied wildly by employer efficiency and ATS choice, with modern systems accelerating pipelines as legacy tools lost ground.

At the same time, pay concentrated at the top around executive leadership and scarce technical skills, degrees remained the baseline but quietly ceded ground to experience, and the strongest advantage emerged at the intersection of leadership, AI fluency, and operational depth. On the resume side, precision beat volume, tailored, focused resumes consistently outperformed mass applications, and seniority correlated with long-term stability.

Layer in survey results showing months-long “normal” searches, overwhelming demand for remote or hybrid work, and near-universal experiences of ghosting, and the picture that emerges is a labor market defined by slower resolution, higher stakes, and a growing premium on strategy, targeting, and trust in an increasingly fragmented hiring system.

Highlights of This Report

Your quick-scan overview of the standout findings from Q1-Q4 2025

From Job Search Survey Insights

• The “Normal” Search Is Months But a Quarter Are Stuck for a Year+: Most job seekers cluster in the 1–6 month window, yet a sizable minority are trapped in prolonged hunts, about 1 in 4 have been searching for a year or longer, including ~10% beyond two years.
• Nearly Half of Job Seekers Would Use AI to Fabricate Resume Details: A stunning 44% of respondents admit they'd use artificial intelligence to exaggerate or misrepresent their qualifications if it meant landing an interview. The near-even ethical split reveals a job market where desperation is overwhelming long-held professional standards.
• One in Seven Workers Have Already Lost Their Jobs to AI: While most workers dismiss automation as a future threat, 13% report they've already been displaced by AI or automation. Technological unemployment has moved from theoretical risk to lived reality.
• 45% of Workers Could Survive Three Months or Less Without a Paycheck: Nearly half of respondents have dangerously thin financial cushions, with 18% facing crisis within a single month of job loss. This precarity helps explain why candidates accept unfavorable terms and tolerate poor treatment.
• 83% of Candidates Reject AI Interviews: The overwhelming majority of job seekers prefer speaking with humans over recording responses for algorithmic analysis. The stark disconnect between employer adoption and candidate opposition signals growing tension in how hiring technology is being deployed.
• Flexibility Is a Requirement, Not a Perk: Remote (47.5%) and hybrid (42.4%) dominate preferences, nearly 90% want some level of location flexibility, while fully onsite work is the clear outlier at just 10.1%, with women showing an even stronger tilt toward remote than men.
• Hiring Trust Is Collapsing: Ghosting is now the defining frustration, nearly 90% of job seekers experience being left without closure after interviews, turning the process into a high-effort grind with little feedback, low confidence, and constant second-guessing.

From Job Search Insights

• Year-End Drag: The median time to first offer climbs steadily through 2025, rising from 57 days in Q1 to a stark 83 days in Q4, signaling that offers slow dramatically as the year closes and job seekers need a much longer runway to reach the finish line.
• Post-Interview Bottleneck: For jobs that progress to an interview, the time from application to first interview is typically under a week, but the wait from interview to offer stretches to 12 days, revealing that the longest delays happen after interest is confirmed, driven by extra rounds, coordination friction, and internal approvals.
• Persistence Divide: Among job seekers who received one or more interviews, half do so within 23 days; but 1 in 10 wait more than four months, and nearly 1 in 5 submit over 100 applications to get an offer.

From Job Search Sites Section

• Niche Beats Scale: Smaller and more curated job platforms deliver far higher response rates than massive boards, Google Jobs (11.3%), GovernmentJobs (8.7%), and Wellfound (6.0%) all significantly outperform LinkedIn (3.1%), Indeed (4.5%), and ZipRecruiter (2.8%), showing that where you apply matters as much as how often you apply.
• Hiring Speed Varies Widely by Employer: Even among high-volume recruiters, interview timelines diverge sharply, companies like Meta, Uber, and TEKsystems move candidates to interviews within one to two weeks, while consultancies and legacy enterprises often take three weeks or more, creating vastly different candidate experiences depending on employer efficiency.
• ATS Consolidation Shapes Outcomes: Hiring infrastructure is rapidly consolidating, with Greenhouse and Ashby gaining share throughout 2025 as older systems like Workday, iCIMS, and Lever decline, signaling that modern, streamlined ATS platforms are increasingly shaping how quickly and effectively candidates move through hiring pipelines.

From Resume Insights

• Targeting Beats Volume: Tailored resumes convert to interviews, offers, or hires at a 5.8% rate, 1.6× higher than untailored resumes, proving that personalization consistently outperforms mass applying, even when tailored submissions make up a small fraction of total applications.
• Clarity Over Excess: Resumes that advance tend to be slightly longer and more complete but noticeably more focused, fewer certifications, tighter summaries, shorter project descriptions, and clearer achievements, showing that relevance and precision matter more than stuffing in extra sections or credentials.
• Leadership Locks In Longevity: Tenure rises sharply with seniority, with executives and technical leaders staying in roles seven to ten years or longer, showing that as responsibility and organizational impact increase, stability and long-term commitment become defining features of career maturity.

From Job Market Analysis

• Pay Concentrates at the Top and Around Scarce Skills: The highest salaries cluster around executive leadership, engineering management, and advanced technical roles, with VP and C-suite titles dominating the top tiers and niche skills like AI, systems programming, and strategic leadership delivering outsized salary premiums far above the market average.
• Where You Live Determines What You Know About Pay: Washington and Oregon lead with ~66% of tech jobs disclosing salary information, while Texas and Florida sit below 33%. Job seekers in different states aren't just earning differently; they're operating with completely different levels of information.
• Big Companies Are Dropping Degree Requirements Fastest: Enterprises with 1,000+ employees accept equivalent experience at nearly double the rate of startups (13% vs 7%). Information security leads all fields, with 1 in 5 roles now open to candidates without traditional credentials.
• Netflix Pays Double the Next Tier, Then Salaries Compress Fast: Netflix sits alone at $410K median salary, nearly double OpenAI ($315K) and Anthropic ($299K). After the top three, compensation compresses sharply - most elite employers cluster between $175K-$205K, making the gap between #1 and #4 larger than most full salaries.

How We Gathered This Data

Before diving into the findings, it’s important to understand who and what sits behind the numbers. Most headline metrics in this report focus on Q1-Q4 2025 (January 1 – December 31). Data streams include platform telemetry (jobs, applications, resumes), parsed job ads, and a 1,049-respondent survey.

Data for Job Search Insights

We mined the anonymized activity logs from Huntr’s Job Tracker, every application, stage change, and offer recorded by users between January 2025 and December 2025. Covering 1.78 million job entries created by over 57k job seekers, giving us precise timestamps to measure time-to-interview, offer velocity, and weekly application cadence.

Data for Job Search Sites

Whenever a user saves a posting, Huntr captures the source URL. For Q1-Q4 2025, that produced 1,665,447 saved jobs, which we grouped by domain to rank boards like LinkedIn or Indeed, and by ATS domains to see which systems dominate. Response rates come from users moving a saved job into “Interview” or beyond, an on-platform action that signals an employer callback. Our metrics in this section key off the root domain of each saved posting (e.g., linkedin.com, indeed.com). This approach cleanly captures stand-alone boards but under-represents applicant-tracking systems (ATSs) that embed their pages inside a company’s own URL; for example, a Greenhouse job served at careers.acme.com/… is attributed to Acme rather than to Greenhouse. As a result, site-level popularity and callback rates favor public boards and may understate the reach of ATS platforms embedded within corporate domain

Data for Job Market Analysis

To avoid double-counting identical roles posted across multiple boards or refresh dates, we deduplicated every listing at the job-title × company level. In Q1-Q4 2025, that yielded 1,033,768 unique job-company combinations from the original 1,665,447 saved jobs. All salary, degree, skill-premium, and location analyses start with this de-duped set, then narrow further. By basing every metric on one record per employer role, we ensure our pay and demand numbers reflect distinct openings rather than repeated advertisements.

Data for Resume Insights

From 243,973 resumes created in 2025 (64.53% job-tailored, 35.47% base) by 59,437 unique authors, we extracted structured fields; sections used, bullet counts, character lengths, and social links. To link resume quality with outcomes, we focused on the 157,445 job-tailored files tied to tracked applications, comparing the 3,901 that led to a self-reported interview to the rest.

Data for Job Search Survey Insights

Finally, we fielded a 41-question web survey in December 2025, collecting 1,049 complete responses across industries, seniorities, and geographies. The survey supplements platform telemetry with personal finance, AI, job search experience, cybersecurity, and more.

Dataset Composition

Before diving into the findings, it’s important to understand who and what sits behind the numbers. All headline metrics in this report focus on Q1-Q4 2025 (January 1 – December 31). Data streams include platform telemetry (jobs, applications, resumes), parsed job ads, and a 1,049-respondent survey.

Geographic Representation

Among the Q1-Q4 2025 records with location data, the platform exhibits a heavily North American-centric distribution. North America dominates with 71.75% of job postings and 69.41% of resume creations, with the United States alone accounting for 62.16% of located job postings and 60% of located resumes. Europe maintains a consistent second position, representing approximately 18.15% of both jobs and resumes across key markets including the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and more.

Implication: Hiring and pay insights are most reliable for the U.S. and Canadian markets and may not generalize globally.

Industry and Job-Function Mix

Our 2025 job market data is heavily skewed towards tech-related jobs. This represents our tech-heavy user base. With Internet Software & Services representing 21.68% of all postings, followed by Professional Services (11.17%) and Financial Services (2.72%). The job role distribution reflects this tech concentration: Engineering/Development positions comprise 26.8% of all listings, with Software Engineers, DevOps Engineers, and Front-End Developers among the most seen roles. Design positions form another significant category at 9.6%, led by Product Designers (4.0% of all jobs) and UX Designers (4.1% of all jobs). Data-related roles represent 5.9% of postings.

Implication: Trend signals are strongest for tech and industrial hiring; other fields should view the data as directional only.

Experience-Level Distribution in Resumes

• Entry-level: 39.9%
• Senior-level: 32.42%
• Mid-level: 21.79%
• Unspecified: 5.88%

Implication: Behaviors such as resume length or section usage may tilt toward early-career norms.

Salary-Data Coverage

Only 30.71% of jobs include salary information, but those that do reveal competitive compensation with median annual salaries ranging from a median minimum of $90,000 to a median max of $129,980.

Company-Size Representation

Among jobs with known company sizes, enterprise companies (1000+ employees) dominate with 34.71% of postings. Medium-sized companies (51-250 employees) represent the second-largest segment at 20.26%, followed by small businesses (11-50 employees) at 18.29%. Companies with 10 or fewer employers have 11.9% of postings. Those with 251-1000 represent 14.84%.

Data Integrity and Disclaimer

All insights in this report are based on anonymized user activity and self-reported survey data from Huntr’s platform. Metrics and examples involving employers or platforms reflect aggregate user trends and are not endorsements or critiques of those companies. While care has been taken to ensure data accuracy, all findings should be interpreted as indicative, not definitive.

Job Search Insights

Time to First Offer

Time to First Offer Slows Sharply by Year-End

The median time to receive a first offer lengthens steadily across 2025, rising from 57 days in Q1 to 63 days in Q2 and 67 days in Q3, before jumping to 83 days in Q4. That final-quarter spike signals a noticeably slower finish line as the year closes, consistent with hiring processes stretching out, approvals taking longer, and fewer roles moving quickly through late-stage decisions. For job seekers, it means planning for a longer runway in the back half of the year, with Q4 requiring the most patience and the most sustained pipeline activity to reach an offer.

Individual Job Timeline

Most of the Waiting Happens After the First Interview

The job search timeline shows that the initial screening phase moves relatively quickly, while final decisions take significantly longer. On average, candidates wait about 5.6 days from application to first interview, indicating that many employers review applications and initiate outreach within the first week. However, once interviews begin, the process slows considerably: the median time from interview to offer stretches to 12 days, more than double the initial wait. This gap suggests that coordination, additional interview rounds, and internal approvals are the primary sources of delay. For job seekers, the data reinforces a familiar reality, early momentum does not guarantee a fast outcome, and patience is often required after interviews, even when initial interest is strong.

Time to First Interview

For Many Job Seekers, the First Interview Can Take Months

Half of candidates secure their first interview in just over three weeks, with the median wait clocking in at 23 days. But the experience shifts dramatically beyond the midpoint. By the 75th percentile, the wait stretches to more than two months, and for the most delayed segment, the 90th percentile, the timeline extends past four months before an interview occurs. This steep escalation highlights a sharply uneven job search experience, where a meaningful share of candidates face prolonged silence despite continued effort. While some opportunities move quickly, others demand long-term persistence and careful expectation management.

Number of Applications Per Week

High-Volume Applying Becomes the Norm at the Upper End

At the midpoint, job seekers submit roughly 16 applications per week, reflecting a steady but manageable pace. That rhythm accelerates quickly beyond the median: those in the 75th percentile average 40 applications weekly, more than doubling the typical workload. At the extreme end, the 90th percentile reaches nearly 85 applications per week, underscoring the intensity required for candidates facing longer or more competitive searches. The sharp climb between percentiles highlights how success often demands a dramatic increase in effort, with top-volume applicants operating at a level closer to a full-time commitment than a casual search.

Applications Created Before Offer Received

How Many Applications Job Seekers Need Before Getting an Offer

From Targeted Search to High-Volume Strategy
The job search experience varies widely, reflecting very different paths to success.

The most common outcome sits in the early stages: about 16% of users receive an offer after submitting 11–20 applications, making it the single largest group in the distribution.

Momentum remains strong through the next tier, with roughly 14% landing an offer after 21–30 applications, meaning nearly 38% of successful job seekers secure a role within their first 30 applications.

At the same time, the data highlights a clear persistence divide. Only about 7% of users succeed after fewer than 10 applications, while an outsized 18% require more than 100 applications before receiving an offer, underscoring how uneven the market can be.

Between these extremes, the middle ranges tell a story of steady attrition. As application counts rise from 30 to 90, the share of users gradually declines, with most buckets falling into the 3–11% range and only a small fraction pushing through the 70–90 application window before eventually succeeding.

Taken together, the distribution points to a bifurcated job market: a sizable group finds traction relatively quickly, while a similarly large cohort must persist far longer, often well past 100 applications, before breaking through.

Job Search Sites

Most Popular Job Sites

LinkedIn Dominates Job Saves in 2025

Throughout 2025, LinkedIn consistently accounted for the largest share of jobs saved, making it the primary discovery and bookmarking platform for job seekers in every quarter. However, the distribution across other platforms highlights a broadening search strategy rather than reliance on a single site. Indeed maintained a strong second-place position across all quarters, while ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, Wellfound, Welcome to the Jungle, and Dice each captured meaningful portions of saved activity depending on the quarter. When grouped together, the long tail of smaller job boards (“Other”) represents a substantial share in every period, underscoring how candidates increasingly mix major platforms with niche, role-specific, or region-focused sites. The pattern suggests that while LinkedIn remains the anchor of the job search ecosystem, successful candidates are spreading their attention across multiple job sites to maximize exposure and opportunity.

Job Search Sites Responsiveness

Certain job sites have higher response rates than others based on user self-reporting. We consider a 'response' as a user moving the job to the interview stage or further in their job search process. That means, if you applied for a job on a particular site, you've heard back from that site at a certain rate.

Smaller Job Platforms Outperform High-Volume Boards on Response Rates

Response rates across 598,627 applications vary sharply across popular job sites, revealing a clear tradeoff between scale and employer engagement. Google Jobs leads the group with an 11.3% response rate, followed closely by GovernmentJobs (8.7%) and Wellfound (6.0%), all of which outperform larger, general-purpose platforms. Mid-tier sites like Glassdoor (5.5%), Handshake (5.1%), and Welcome to the Jungle (4.5%) show solid responsiveness despite lower overall application volume. By contrast, the biggest job boards struggle to convert applications into interviews: Indeed (4.5%), LinkedIn (3.1%), and ZipRecruiter (2.8%) all trail the group, while Dice posts the lowest response rate at just 0.35% despite tens of thousands of applications. The pattern suggests that while large platforms dominate reach, more curated or niche job sites consistently deliver higher odds of hearing back, making platform choice a critical lever in an effective job search strategy.

Top Companies Responsiveness

Big Tech Moves Fast, Consulting Moves Slower on Interview Turnaround

Interview response times vary meaningfully even among companies with the highest interview volume, revealing clear differences in hiring velocity. The fastest-moving employers, led by Meta, Uber, and TEKsystems, typically initiate interviews within one to two weeks of job creation, signaling highly optimized recruiting pipelines. Large technology platforms such as Google, Adobe, Microsoft, and Salesforce cluster tightly in the middle, averaging roughly 12–16 days, balancing scale with structured screening processes. By contrast, enterprise consultancies and legacy organizations, including Accenture, IBM, Deloitte, EY, and Capital One, tend to move more deliberately, often taking 17–22 days to reach the interview stage. At the slowest end, companies like Pinterest and Oracle extend beyond 30 days, suggesting heavier approval layers or longer candidate review cycles. Overall, the pattern shows that response speed is less about hiring volume and more about operational efficiency, with candidates experiencing dramatically different timelines depending on where they apply, even among the most active employers.

Popular Applicant Tracking Systems

Modern ATS Platforms Pull Ahead as Hiring Infrastructure Consolidates in 2025

Throughout 2025, hiring technology usage steadily concentrates around a handful of dominant platforms. Greenhouse extends its lead month over month, rising from roughly 26% at the start of the year to just over 30% by December, while Workday trends in the opposite direction, slipping below 20% by year’s end. Ashby stands out as the fastest climber, nearly doubling its footprint from about 6% in January to more than 10% in December, signaling growing adoption among fast-scaling teams. Meanwhile, legacy systems such as iCIMS and Lever gradually lose ground, each shedding several share points across the year. The shrinking “Other” category, from nearly one-fifth of usage in January to under 14% in December, underscores a clear shift toward standardization, as employers increasingly converge on a smaller set of well-established applicant tracking systems.

* Go here for more information on how this data was calculated

Resume Insights

Resume Success Factors

Tailoring Resume to Job Descriptions

Tailored Resumes Are 1.6× More Effective at Driving Interviews and Offers

Applications submitted with a tailored resume convert to interviews, offers, or hires at a rate of 5.8%, significantly outperforming the 3.73% conversion seen when resumes aren’t customized. Despite fewer total applications, 65,088 tailored submissions compared to more than 1 million untailored ones, the tailored group produced 3,774 interview or offer outcomes, underscoring the efficiency of targeted applications. The gap highlights a clear tradeoff: personalization consistently yields stronger results than high-volume applying, making resume tailoring one of the most effective levers job seekers can pull to improve their chances of moving forward.

Education Section

Interviewed Resumes Provide Slightly More Detail in Education Sections

Resumes that led to interviews include longer education descriptions on average, with 88 characters per entry compared to 83 characters for resumes that did not move forward. While the difference is modest, it suggests that candidates who add a bit more context, such as relevant coursework, honors, or focus areas, may better signal fit to reviewers. The pattern indicates that education sections don’t need to be lengthy, but a small amount of added clarity can help strengthen a resume’s overall impression during screening.

Certification Section

Interviewed Candidates List Fewer Certifications

Resumes that advanced to interviews include an average of 1.06 certifications, compared with 1.23 certifications on resumes that did not move forward. The difference suggests that simply listing more credentials doesn’t necessarily improve outcomes. Instead, candidates who progress may be more selective, emphasizing certifications that are directly relevant rather than compiling longer lists. The pattern reinforces a broader theme across resumes: precision and relevance tend to matter more than volume when it comes to signaling qualification and fit.

Skills Section

Interviewed Resumes List Slightly More Skills But Not by Much

Resumes that resulted in interviews include an average of 26.51 skills, compared with 26.01 skills on resumes that were not selected. The narrow gap shows that simply adding more skills offers limited advantage once candidates reach a certain threshold. Instead, outcomes likely hinge on how well those skills align with the role and how clearly they’re supported elsewhere on the resume. The takeaway is subtle but important: completeness matters, but relevance and prioritization matter more than sheer volume.

Achievements

Interviewed Resumes Balance Achievement Breadth and Clarity

Resumes that progressed to interviews show an average of 4.42 achievements per role, paired with 161 characters per achievement, indicating a balanced approach between coverage and detail. In contrast, resumes that did not advance list slightly more achievements per role (4.69) but with marginally shorter descriptions (157 characters). The comparison suggests that hiring teams may favor clearer, more substantial achievement statements over simply listing a higher number. Well-developed accomplishments appear to communicate impact more effectively than density alone.

Work Experience

Interviewed Candidates Show Both Broader Role Histories and Longer Careers

Resumes that advanced to interviews reflect an average of 4.75 roles and a median of 11 years of experience, compared with 4.46 roles and 9.92 years for those that did not move forward. The combination suggests that interviewers respond positively to candidates who demonstrate sustained career progression alongside varied role exposure. Rather than frequent job changes alone, the pattern points to meaningful experience accumulated across multiple positions as a key signal of readiness.

Resume Length by Page Count

Longer Isn't Better: Interview Rates Plummet After 2 Pages

When it comes to resume length, the data tells a compelling story: two pages is the sweet spot. An analysis of over 128,000 resumes reveals that 2-page resumes dominate both in popularity and performance, accounting for 63% of all submissions while achieving the highest interview rate at 3.24%. Single-page resumes, often touted as the gold standard, actually underperform slightly with a 3.06% interview rate; suggesting that candidates may be cutting valuable experience to meet an arbitrary length constraint.

The real cautionary tale, however, lies at the other end of the spectrum. Resumes stretching to 3 pages see interview rates drop to 2.6%, and those at 4+ pages fall to just 2.12%—a 35% decline from the 2-page peak. The takeaway for job seekers is clear: provide enough detail to showcase your qualifications, but know when to stop. In the battle for recruiter attention, concise comprehensiveness beats both brevity and verbosity.

Interviewed Resumes Run Slightly Longer

Resumes that led to interviews average 1.63 pages, compared with 1.48 pages for those that did not advance. The difference suggests that candidates who progress tend to include a bit more detail, enough to add context without crossing into excessive length. Rather than strict one-page adherence, the pattern points to a balanced approach: concise resumes that still provide sufficient depth appear more likely to move forward in the hiring process.

Summary

Interviewed Resumes Use Summaries More Often but Keep Them Tighter

Resumes that progressed to interviews include a summary section 92.7% of the time, compared with 89.3% for resumes that did not advance. However, those summaries are slightly more concise, averaging 498 characters versus 512 characters. The pattern suggests that having a summary is beneficial, but effectiveness comes from clarity and focus rather than length. A well-crafted, succinct overview appears more likely to capture attention than a longer, more generalized introduction.

Projects

Shorter Project Descriptions Are Linked to More Interviews

Resumes that moved forward to interviews include more concise project descriptions, averaging 61 characters, compared with 101 characters on resumes that did not advance. The contrast suggests that hiring teams may respond better to tightly scoped project summaries that highlight outcomes or impact rather than long explanations. Clear, efficient descriptions appear to communicate value more effectively, reinforcing that brevity, when paired with relevance, can be a competitive advantage.

Social Links

LinkedIn Presence Stands Out Among Interviewed Candidates

Resumes that led to interviews are far more likely to include a LinkedIn profile, appearing on 71.7% of interviewed resumes compared with 64.3% of those that did not advance. GitHub shows a smaller but still positive gap (10.7% vs. 10.1%), while Twitter and Dribbble remain rare across both groups, each appearing on well under 1% of resumes. The pattern suggests that professional, role-relevant platforms, especially LinkedIn, carry more weight in screening than broader social or creative networks.

Contact Info

Contact Information Is Nearly Universal but Small Gaps Still Matter

Email addresses appear on 99.1% of resumes that led to interviews and 98.8% of those that did not, making email presence essentially standard. Phone numbers show a similar pattern, included on 92.4% of interviewed resumes and 92.7% of non-interviewed ones.

Resume Sections and Length

Resume Section Popularity Overall

What Recruiters See First on Most Resumes

Nearly every resume includes the basics, with contact email, work experience, and education appearing on more than nine out of ten profiles. Phone numbers and skills sections are also standard, reinforcing how important accessibility and core competencies remain in early screening. Beyond these essentials, adoption drops sharply: about half of candidates include a LinkedIn profile, while far fewer highlight certifications or project work. Optional sections such as volunteer experience, GitHub links, and personal websites appear on only a small share of resumes, suggesting that most candidates prioritize universally expected sections over supplementary signals, unless those extras are directly relevant to their field.

Resume Section Popularity by Job Category

How Resume Sections Vary Across Job Categories

Across industries, resumes follow a consistent core structure, with work experience, education, skills, and contact information appearing on nearly every profile regardless of role. Work experience exceeds 90% inclusion in almost all categories, while education and skills remain close behind, reinforcing their role as foundational elements. Beyond the basics, clear differences emerge: Information Security professionals stand out for their heavy use of certifications and project sections, reflecting credential-driven hiring and hands-on proof of expertise. Creative and Design roles are far more likely to include links and portfolio-style sections, while Sales and Administrative roles place comparatively less emphasis on projects. Overall, resumes adapt subtly by field, emphasizing the sections that best signal credibility and relevance within each profession.

Number and Length of Work Experience By Target Seniority

Career Progression Shows Up Clearly in Resume Experience

Resume experience scales sharply with seniority. Entry-level candidates typically list three roles spanning about three years, reflecting early career exploration and shorter tenures. Mid-level professionals still average three roles, but their time in the workforce doubles to roughly six years, signaling longer stays and deeper responsibility within each position. Senior candidates show the most pronounced shift, listing five roles and a median of fourteen years of experience, underscoring long career arcs, leadership growth, and accumulated expertise. The pattern highlights how advancement is driven less by frequent role changes and more by sustained impact over time as careers mature.

Number and Length of Achievements By Target Seniority

Achievements Grow More Detailed With Seniority

As careers progress, resumes show a clear shift toward stronger and more developed accomplishments. Entry-level professionals typically highlight three achievements per role, with each description just over 110 characters, reflecting early experience and concise scope. At the mid-level, the median rises to four achievements, and descriptions become more substantial, signaling broader responsibility and clearer outcomes. Senior professionals maintain a similar number of achievements, but with the longest descriptions, indicating deeper impact, higher stakes, and more complex results. Together, the pattern shows that advancement isn’t just about adding more bullets, it’s about articulating achievements with greater depth and clarity as responsibility increases.

Resume Page Count by Experience

Resume Length Grows Steadily With Career Progression

Resume length shifts noticeably as professionals advance in their careers. Entry-level candidates overwhelmingly rely on one- or two-page resumes, with two pages dominating as the standard format. At the mid-level, two pages remain the norm, but three-page resumes become far more common as experience, projects, and responsibilities accumulate. Senior professionals show the most variation, with a significant share extending to three pages or more, reflecting longer career histories, leadership roles, and specialized expertise. While two pages remain the most common format at every stage, the gradual expansion in length highlights how resume content naturally scales with experience rather than remaining fixed to a single-page ideal.

Number of Skills

Most Resumes List Between 11 and 28 Skills

Skill counts on resumes follow a steep, uneven curve. By the 25th percentile, candidates list just 11 skills, while the midpoint rises to 18, indicating that many professionals concentrate on a relatively focused set of competencies. At the 75th percentile, resumes expand to 28 skills, showing how more experienced or specialized candidates broaden their profiles to cover tools, technologies, and complementary abilities. The wide gap between the lower and upper ranges highlights how quickly expectations scale as careers progress, with skill accumulation accelerating well beyond the median. Overall, the distribution suggests that while most candidates operate within a tight skill range, standing out increasingly requires depth paired with breadth as experience grows.

Work Tenure and Experience Years

Work Tenure by Job Title

Leadership Roles Show the Longest Staying Power Across Careers

Tenure length increases sharply with seniority, revealing that the longest stays are concentrated at the top of organizations. Executive roles such as CEO, Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, and Vice President consistently exceed seven to ten years, reflecting the stability and long-term responsibility associated with leadership positions. Technical leadership roles, including Technical Project Manager, Technical Lead, Principal, and Principal Consultant, also show extended tenure, suggesting that deep institutional knowledge and specialized expertise are rewarded with longevity. Mid-level management and senior specialist roles, such as Senior Program Manager, Director of Engineering, and Senior Systems Engineer, cluster closely behind, while individual contributor roles generally exhibit shorter tenures. Overall, the pattern highlights a clear progression: as responsibility, influence, and organizational impact increase, professionals tend to remain in their roles significantly longer, reinforcing how tenure often mirrors career maturity rather than job function alone

Total Experience Years by Target Title

Senior Leadership Roles Demand Decades of Professional Growth
This analysis examines resumes grouped by their target job title, calculating the total years of experience across each resume and finding the median for each role. CEOs lead with 26.4 years of median experience, followed by CTOs at 24-25 years, while other C-suite roles (CIO, COO, CFO, CMO) cluster around 20-22 years. VP and Director-level positions consistently fall in the 19-21 year range, confirming that executive leadership roles typically require two decades of career progression.

Education in Resume

Top Fields of Study by Target Role

Degrees Still Matter, But Career Paths Are Far From One-Dimensional

Across job categories, educational backgrounds cluster around a few dominant fields, revealing both traditional pipelines and growing flexibility in how careers are built. Technical roles remain tightly aligned with formal training, Software & IT and Information Security are overwhelmingly rooted in computer science and cybersecurity, while Data & Analytics shows a clear concentration in computer science, data science, and analytics programs. Business-focused disciplines act as the most versatile foundation, appearing consistently across Administrative & Clerical, Operations, Sales, Product, Marketing, and Leadership roles, underscoring how business administration serves as a common launch point across industries. Creative roles skew toward specialized design education, while regulated professions like Healthcare and Legal maintain highly concentrated academic paths. At the same time, the spread of secondary and tertiary fields across many categories highlights how employers increasingly value transferable skills and applied experience alongside formal education, allowing professionals to move across functions even when their degree doesn’t perfectly match their role.

Skills in Resume

Most Popular Skills by Target Title Category

Every Career Is Becoming More Technical, Analytical, and Cross-Functional

Across every job category analyzed, from Software & IT and Data Science to Marketing, Operations, and Customer Support, the same pattern emerges: modern roles demand a blend of core domain expertise, data fluency, and collaboration skills. Technical stacks dominate engineering and security roles, but analytics tools like SQL, Python, Tableau, and Power BI now appear well beyond traditionally technical fields, including finance, operations, product, and even customer support. Execution platforms such as Jira, Salesforce, HubSpot, and Confluence surface repeatedly, reflecting how work is increasingly tracked, measured, and integrated across teams. At the same time, foundational skills, time management, communication, problem solving, and stakeholder coordination remain essential across administrative, sales, and service roles. Together, these distributions show that career paths in 2025 are less siloed than ever: success increasingly depends on combining specialized knowledge with data literacy, modern tooling, and the ability to operate effectively within cross-functional systems.

Software & IT - Python Tops the Stack, Git and JavaScript Close Behind

Software & IT professionals list Python on 64.75% of resumes, making it the most commonly cited skill in the category. Git (50.80%) and JavaScript (49.56%) follow, reflecting how version control and web-centric development remain core expectations. SQL (45.04%) and Java (42.11%) round out the next tier, highlighting the continued importance of databases and enterprise engineering. Infrastructure and modern deployment tools are also widely represented, with Docker at 38.83% and AWS at 29.88%, while database technologies like MySQL (32.85%), MongoDB (30.86%), and PostgreSQL (28.59%) show a split across relational and NoSQL stacks. Frontend fundamentals remain durable, HTML (28.35%) and CSS (28.03%)—alongside the modern JavaScript ecosystem (TypeScript 28.20%, Node.js 27.39%, React 26.52%). Finally, tools like Kubernetes (17.82%), Jira (17.64%), and Jenkins (15.55%) signal how frequently engineering roles now intersect with DevOps and delivery workflows.

Data Science & Analytics – Python and SQL Define the Core Stack

Data science and analytics professionals overwhelmingly rely on Python, which appears on 80.03% of resumes, making it the clear foundation of the field. SQL (75.90%) follows closely, underscoring the central role of data extraction and querying across analytics workflows. Visualization and reporting tools form the next tier, with Tableau (50.02%) and Power BI (49.00%) reflecting the importance of communicating insights to stakeholders. Core Python libraries, Pandas (39.03%) and NumPy (35.05%), anchor data manipulation, while Excel (32.98%) and R (30.11%) remain widely used for analysis and reporting. The ecosystem extends into modeling and production, with Scikit-Learn (26.90%), TensorFlow (19.23%), and Machine Learning (17.67%) highlighting applied ML adoption. Infrastructure and tooling such as Git (28.22%), AWS (18.52%), and Docker (15.11%) show how modern data roles increasingly blend analytics, engineering, and deployment responsibilities.

Creative & Design – Figma Dominates, UX Craft Skills Cluster Behind

Creative and design professionals overwhelmingly cite Figma (65.27%), making it the clear centerpiece of modern design workflows. A second tier of hands-on UX execution skills follows, led by Prototyping (32.05%), Usability Testing (30.62%), and Wireframing (29.11%), showing how frequently designers are expected to validate ideas, not just produce visuals. Broad toolkits remain important, with Adobe Creative Suite (29.11%) and specific tools like Photoshop (24.64%), Illustrator (22.86%), and InDesign (16.70%) reinforcing the continued relevance of Adobe alongside Figma. Strategic and systems-oriented work is also prominent: User Research (25.09%), Design Systems (24.20%), Information Architecture (21.96%), and Interaction Design (22.14%) highlight the blend of product thinking and craft. Collaboration tools like Miro (23.93%) and workflow platforms like Jira (21.16%) reflect the reality that design is deeply embedded in cross-functional product teams, while HTML (18.75%) and CSS (18.21%) indicate a meaningful slice of designers still operate close to implementation.

Product Management – Execution Tools and Data Fluency Lead the Stack
Product managers most frequently cite Jira (45.02%), reflecting how deeply backlog management and sprint execution are embedded in the role. SQL (41.87%) ranks second, signaling that modern PMs are expected to interrogate data directly rather than rely solely on analysts. Design collaboration is also central, with Figma (32.50%) and Miro (13.17%) appearing alongside documentation tools like Confluence (26.87%), underscoring the cross-functional nature of product work. Analytical and experimentation skills form a strong middle tier, Tableau (23.33%), A/B Testing (18.87%), Power BI (17.30%), and Google Analytics (15.86%), showing how measurement and iteration drive decision-making. Methodologies remain foundational, with Agile (13.70%), Scrum (12.98%), and broader Agile Methodologies (13.04%) reinforcing process fluency, while Product Strategy (13.30%), Market Research (11.60%), and Stakeholder Management (25.82%) highlight the balance between long-term vision and day-to-day execution.

Marketing & Advertising – Analytics and Creative Tools Define Modern Marketers

Marketing and advertising professionals most frequently highlight Google Analytics (36.02%), reflecting the field’s strong emphasis on performance measurement and attribution. Visual creation and rapid content production tools follow closely, with Canva (33.66%) signaling how central speed and design accessibility have become. Marketing automation and CRM platforms form the next tier, HubSpot (21.78%) and Salesforce (19.35%), underscoring the blend of demand generation and pipeline accountability now expected of marketers. Execution and optimization skills are widely represented, including Project Management (21.25%), SEO (18.58%), Google Ads (17.97%), and A/B Testing (15.69%), highlighting the iterative nature of campaign work. Content and platform fluency remains essential, with WordPress (20.56%), Email Marketing (13.86%), and MailChimp (13.79%), while tools like Tableau (14.32%), Excel (15.92%), and Market Research (12.87%) reinforce the increasing data-driven expectations placed on marketing roles in 2025.

Sales & Business Development – CRM Mastery Anchors the Revenue Stack

Sales and business development professionals most frequently cite Salesforce (29.03%), reinforcing its position as the dominant CRM platform underpinning pipeline management and revenue tracking. HubSpot (16.27%) follows, reflecting its strong presence in SMB and growth-focused sales teams. Beyond tooling, execution fundamentals remain critical, Time Management (15.48%), Cold Calling (14.54%), and Lead Generation (13.13%) highlight the operational rigor required to maintain consistent deal flow. Relationship-centric skills such as Account Management (12.66%), Negotiation (11.04%), and Relationship Building (9.26%) underscore the human side of selling, while Pipeline Management (11.24%) and Project Management (12.55%) reflect increasingly complex, multi-stakeholder deals. Data and workflow fluency round out the stack, with Excel (12.13%), Microsoft Office (13.60%), and prospecting tools like ZoomInfo (11.04%) and LinkedIn Sales Navigator (9.52%), illustrating how modern sales roles blend relationship-building with structured, data-driven execution.

Information Security – Programming and Detection Tools Anchor Cyber Defense

Information security professionals most frequently list Python (53.87%), underscoring its central role in automation, scripting, and security tooling. Network inspection and monitoring tools follow closely, with Wireshark (40.48%) and Linux (31.85%) reflecting hands-on investigative and infrastructure skills. Detection and response capabilities form a strong middle tier, Splunk (29.76%), SQL (26.49%), and Incident Response (23.07%), highlighting the importance of log analysis and real-time threat handling. Core security fundamentals such as Network Security (20.98%), Vulnerability Assessment (19.49%), and scanning tools like Nmap (23.07%) and Nessus (16.52%) emphasize defensive readiness. Scripting and platform fluency, including Bash (18.90%), PowerShell (17.11%), and cloud platforms like AWS (16.96%), illustrate how modern security roles blend traditional IT knowledge with cloud and automation expertise, while standards like ISO 27001 (16.07%) signal the growing importance of governance alongside technical defense.

Administrative & Clerical – Time Management and Office Fluency Define the Role

Administrative and clerical professionals most frequently emphasize Time Management (25.23%), reflecting the role’s constant need to juggle priorities, deadlines, and competing requests. Core productivity tools dominate the next tier, with Microsoft Office (21.75%), Microsoft Office Suite (19.26%), and Excel (18.13%) underscoring how foundational document, spreadsheet, and scheduling skills remain. Precision and service-oriented competencies are also central, Attention to Detail (19.86%) and Customer Service (19.86%) appear on nearly one in five resumes, highlighting the balance between accuracy and interpersonal support. Collaboration and modern workplace tools such as Google Workspace (16.77%), Slack (13.07%), and Zoom (12.39%) signal the shift toward digital-first office environments, while Project Management (12.24%), Problem Solving (14.50%), and Adaptability (12.54%) reflect growing expectations that administrative roles operate as proactive coordinators rather than purely reactive support staff.

Customer Support & Service – Service Fundamentals Meet Technical Fluency
Customer support and service professionals most commonly emphasize Customer Service (29.04%) and Time Management (25.55%), reflecting the constant need to balance high volumes of requests while maintaining service quality. Traditional office skills remain foundational, Microsoft Office (18.57%), Excel (12.22%), and Microsoft Office Suite (12.32%), but technical fluency is increasingly visible. Tools like Salesforce (14.25%), Zendesk (11.49%), Jira (10.29%), and collaboration platforms such as Slack (10.48%) point to the growing overlap between support, CRM, and ticketing systems. Problem resolution skills form a strong middle tier, including Problem Solving (16.82%), Conflict Resolution (13.51%), and Troubleshooting (9.93%), while the presence of SQL (13.42%) and Python (11.49%) signals how many support roles now require light technical or data capabilities. Together, the mix highlights a shift toward customer support positions that blend interpersonal expertise with operational and technical competence.

Finance & Accounting – Analytics Tools Now Sit Beside Core Accounting Skills

Finance and accounting professionals most frequently list Power BI (27.48%), signaling how central business intelligence and dashboarding have become in modern finance roles. Excel (24.43%) and SQL (24.30%) follow closely, reinforcing the expectation that finance professionals not only manage numbers but actively query and analyze data. Visualization and analytics platforms such as Tableau (21.12%) and programming languages like Python (17.68%) reflect the growing overlap between finance, analytics, and automation. Traditional finance competencies remain critical, Financial Reporting (15.52%), Financial Modeling (14.50%), Budgeting & Forecasting (11.96%), and Variance Analysis (11.70%), while systems like QuickBooks (13.74%) and SAP (11.32%) highlight enterprise and SMB accounting environments. The presence of soft and operational skills such as Attention to Detail (13.49%) and Time Management (12.85%) underscores the precision and reliability still required, even as finance roles continue to evolve toward more data-driven and strategic functions.

Operations & Logistics – Data-Driven Execution Anchors Modern Operations

Operations and logistics professionals most frequently cite SQL (39.19%) and Project Management (35.35%), highlighting how operational roles increasingly depend on structured data analysis and coordinated execution. Programming and analytics tools form a strong second tier, Python (29.70%), Tableau (29.49%), and Power BI (26.87%), reflecting the growing expectation that operations teams monitor performance, forecast demand, and optimize workflows using data. Core productivity tools such as Excel (26.87%), Microsoft Office (18.18%), and Microsoft Office Suite (17.17%) remain essential, while collaboration and workflow platforms like Jira (25.66%), Salesforce (22.22%), and Slack (14.55%) demonstrate how operations intersects with product, sales, and customer teams. Strategic and organizational skills, including Strategic Planning (17.98%), Change Management (15.56%), and Cross-Functional Collaboration (16.97%), round out the profile, reinforcing the role of operations as both an execution engine and a strategic backbone within organizations.

Career Pathways

Top Career Progression Pathways

Career Progression Pathway Network

This network visualization traces career movement across hundreds of job titles spanning nearly 20 industry categories observed throughout 2025, illustrating how professionals progress, pivot, and advance across roles.

Rather than a linear ladder, the circular layout reveals a highly interconnected career ecosystem. Technical roles form the densest core of the network, with Software Engineer emerging as the primary hub, acting as both a common destination and a frequent launch point for advancement into senior, lead, and managerial positions. Transitions into Senior Software Engineer stand out as one of the most concentrated upward moves, reinforcing its role as a key inflection point in technical career paths.

The technology sector dominates the graph, displaying clearly defined advancement pathways from junior and associate roles through senior, principal, and engineering management positions. These pathways coexist with a significant number of lateral transitions, reflecting how skills transfer across closely related roles such as frontend, backend, full-stack, data, and DevOps engineering.

Beyond technology, the network highlights cross-functional mobility as a defining feature of modern careers. Business and data-oriented roles frequently bridge into adjacent functions. Business Analysts often move into Product Manager or Project Manager roles, while Data Analysts branch into Data Scientist, Data Engineer, and even software-focused positions. These shifts underscore the growing overlap between analytical, technical, and product skill sets.

The visualization also captures early-career dynamics, including intern-to-full-time conversions, step-up promotions from coordinator or assistant roles, and sideways moves between comparable positions. Together, these transitions paint a comprehensive picture of career evolution in 2025, one characterized less by rigid hierarchies and more by fluid movement across levels, teams, and disciplines.

Average Time in Career Progression

Software & IT Career Progressions: Time in Previous Role

Data Analyst Career Progressions: Time in Previous Role

Sales Career Progressions: Time in Previous Role

Product Management Career Progressions: Time in Previous Role

Design Career Progressions: Time in Previous Role

Job Market Analysis

Salaries By Role

Top Paying Job Titles

VP and C-Suite Roles Dominate the Highest Pay Tiers

The top of the pay scale is overwhelmingly led by executive and senior leadership positions, with VP-level, C-suite, and director roles consistently commanding the highest median salary midpoints. Titles tied to engineering leadership and company-wide decision-making sit at the very top, followed closely by finance, operations, and revenue-focused executives. Even within this elite group, compensation remains tightly clustered at the upper end, underscoring how organizations continue to place a premium on strategic oversight, technical leadership, and revenue accountability at the most senior levels.

Salaries By Education Requirements

Top Paying Degrees

What Employers Will Pay: Salary Offerings by Education Requirement

Our analysis reveals a clear correlation between stated education requirements and the salaries employers are willing to pay. Positions requiring a doctorate command the highest wages, with an average offered salary of $163,456; nearly 25% above the overall market average of $131,266. Roles requiring a master's degree follow closely behind with a 17% premium. Perhaps most striking is the steep drop-off for positions that don't require a four-year degree: jobs listing only a high school diploma or associate's degree as requirements offer salaries 40-44% below market average.

Top Earning Fields of Study

Technical and AI-Adjacent Fields Deliver the Largest Salary Premiums

Fields of study tied to advanced technical and strategic skills command the strongest pay advantages, with salary premiums clustering well above the $30,000 mark. Applied sciences leads the list with a premium of $67,538, followed closely by design communication ($65,500) and robotics ($65,000), all earning more than $185,000 on average compared to an overall benchmark of $120,000. AI-focused disciplines continue to stand out: machine learning ($55,000), artificial intelligence ($48,000), and AI ($34,938) each deliver sizable uplifts, reinforcing the market value of specialized computational expertise. Business and strategy credentials also pay off, with an MBA adding $47,000 and strategy roles $43,800 above average. Even at the lower end of the top 15, fields like operations research, cognitive science, and behavioral science still generate nearly $30,000 in additional annual pay, underscoring how analytical and human-systems knowledge consistently translates into higher earnings.

Salaries by Company Size

Salary By Company Size

Bigger Companies Pay More but the Pay Gap Widens with Scale

Median salary midpoints rise steadily as company size increases, climbing from about $115,000 at the smallest firms (1–10 employees) to roughly $131,000 at organizations with more than 1,000 employees. Mid-sized companies cluster tightly around the $122,500–$125,000 range, suggesting relatively consistent compensation norms once teams grow beyond early-stage startups. What changes most dramatically at the largest employers is not just pay level, but pay spread: enterprise-scale companies show the widest salary ranges, reflecting greater role specialization, seniority variation, and negotiation flexibility compared to smaller firms with narrower compensation bands.

Salaries by Location

Top States by Salary

West Coast States Set the Pace for Highest Median Tech Salaries

Washington leads the ranking with a median midpoint around $125K, followed closely by California at roughly $123K and New York at about $118K, reinforcing the continued dominance of major coastal tech hubs. Across all top states, the gap between median minimum and maximum offers remains substantial, often $40K to $60K, highlighting wide negotiation ranges and role variability. Overall, the pattern shows that while traditional tech centers still command the highest typical pay, a growing number of interior and lower-cost states are offering competitive salary midpoints that narrow the geographic compensation gap.

Salary Transparency in Job Postings

Most Transparent States

Pacific Northwest and Coastal States Lead the Push for Salary Transparency

Washington and Oregon top the rankings, with roughly two-thirds of tech job listings including salary information, followed closely by Minnesota, California, and New York, all clearing the 60% mark. States with long-standing pay-transparency regulations or strong labor market norms around disclosure consistently cluster near the top, while much of the Midwest and South trail behind, often falling below 40%. Even among large tech markets like Texas and Florida, fewer than one-third of postings disclose pay details. The spread highlights a clear geographic divide: candidates in West Coast and select Northeast markets are far more likely to see compensation upfront, while job seekers elsewhere still face limited visibility into pay expectations.

Salaries by Skill Requirements

Skills with Highest Salary Premium

Leadership, Strategy, and AI Expertise Drive the Largest Salary Premiums

The highest salary uplifts are concentrated in skills tied to executive influence, advanced research, and large-scale technical decision-making. Empirical research leads the list with pay levels more than 180% above the overall median, followed closely by C-level relationship management, solution-based sales, and enterprise software product design, each exceeding a 150% premium. Technical leadership capabilities, such as engineering leadership, technical strategy, developer platforms, and AI transformation, consistently command premiums between 85% and 110%, reflecting strong demand for individuals who can guide complex systems and teams. Notably, many of these top-paying skills appear in relatively few job postings, underscoring their scarcity, while broader leadership competencies like engineering management and strategic vision combine high compensation with larger hiring volumes, signaling that companies are willing to pay significantly more for professionals who can translate technical depth into organizational impact.

Top Paying Programming Languages

Lower-Level Languages Lead the Salary Rankings in 2025

Rust tops the list with a median midpoint salary of about $175K, reinforcing its reputation as one of the most lucrative languages for experienced engineers, followed closely by Go and Node, both clearing the $160K mark. A cluster of systems- and performance-oriented languages, including Objective-C, Golang, Swift, Scala, and Kotlin, consistently land in the $157K–$162K range, suggesting strong employer willingness to pay premiums for developers working close to core infrastructure or large-scale platforms. Even widely adopted languages like TypeScript and C++ remain highly competitive near $150K, balancing strong compensation with large hiring volumes. Overall, the ranking highlights a clear trend: languages associated with systems programming, scalability, and complex architectures continue to command the highest pay across the tech market.

Top Paying Design Tools

Specialized Design Tools Command the Highest Pay Premiums

Salaries skew noticeably higher for designers working with specialized and advanced tools, with Framer and Principle topping the list at median midpoint salaries of roughly $150K or more, followed closely by ProtoPie and Figma. While Figma stands out for its massive hiring footprint, over 13,000 roles, it still delivers a strong midpoint near $128K, reinforcing its status as both widely adopted and well compensated. More general or production-oriented tools, particularly across the Adobe ecosystem, tend to cluster between $80K and $110K, reflecting broader accessibility and larger talent pools. Overall, the pattern suggests that depth in niche, high-leverage design tools is rewarded with higher pay, while ubiquitous platforms offer stability and scale at more moderate compensation levels.

Salaries by Company

Top Paying Companies

Netflix and OpenAI Lead the Pack on Median Pay But Most Top Employers Cluster Near $175K–$205K

Netflix sits in a tier of its own with a median salary midpoint of $410,000, far ahead of OpenAI at $315,000 and Anthropic at $296,486. After that, the list compresses quickly: companies like Reddit ($228,950) and Figma ($226,000) lead the next band, while many well-known employers, including Airbnb ($204,000), Apple ($201,900), Salesforce ($196,840), and Stripe ($196,600), sit tightly grouped around the ~$195K mark. Hiring volume also varies widely within these pay levels, with TikTok posting the most roles (845 jobs) at a median midpoint of $184,328, while Netflix (651) and Stripe (641) combine very high compensation with substantial posting volume.

Education Requirements

Degree Requirements by Job Title

Bachelor’s Degrees Remain the Baseline But Flexibility Varies Sharply by Role

Bachelor’s degrees remain the default requirement across most job categories, frequently accounting for 85–95% of postings in fields such as Software & IT, Product Management, Marketing & Advertising, Finance & Accounting, and Data & Analytics, while more specialized areas like Science & Research stand apart with over a third of roles requiring education beyond a bachelor’s level. At the same time, degree flexibility varies sharply by role: Administrative & Clerical and Customer Support & Service positions are the most accessible to candidates without a bachelor’s degree, with roughly 55–60% of postings accepting lower credentials, and Healthcare and Security & Law Enforcement showing similarly mixed expectations. The overall pattern highlights a clear split between knowledge-intensive and leadership roles that remain firmly degree-driven and operational or service-oriented roles that offer significantly more leeway around formal education.

Field of Study Requirements By Industry

Before you get started:
The stacked bar chart shows how often different fields of study are referenced in job requirements, broken out by the hiring industry rather than a candidate’s background. Tech-related fields dominate across nearly every sector, with electronic equipment and components standing out at roughly 50% tech-related mentions, followed closely by wireless telecommunications, communications equipment, and semiconductors, all hovering around the low-40% range. Internet software and IT services also align with expectations, each emphasizing technical backgrounds in about 40% of postings.

Beyond core tech sectors, the mix becomes more revealing. Industries like insurance, airlines, and diversified financial services still devote roughly 30–32% of their requirements to tech-related fields, underscoring how deeply digital skills have permeated traditionally non-technical domains. Manufacturing-heavy sectors such as semiconductors, aerospace, electrical equipment, and automotive pair strong technical demand with sizable engineering requirements, often between 17% and 24%, reflecting the need for applied, systems-level expertise.

Service-oriented industries show the broadest blend of educational backgrounds. Professional services, air freight and logistics, hospitality, and retail combine technical skills with substantial business-related requirements, frequently exceeding 20–25% business-focused mentions. Even life sciences–oriented sectors like pharmaceuticals and biotechnology display a hybrid profile, balancing tech and business needs alongside healthcare and science backgrounds. Overall, the pattern points to a steady shift away from single-discipline hiring toward hybrid skill expectations, where technical literacy increasingly complements business, engineering, and domain-specific expertise across nearly all industries.

Fields of Study Growing in Demand

This analysis explores shifting requirements for fields of study in tech job postings, comparing Q1 2025 to Q4 2025. The data highlights the relative growth percentage for fields that saw a meaningful percentage point increase (≥0.1%) in job listings referencing these qualifications. Percentage point (pp) change is calculated by subtracting the Q2 percentage from the Q3 percentage. For instance, let's say Marketing was mentioned in 1.27% of job postings in Q1 2025 and increased to 1.84% in Q4 2025, resulting in a 0.57 percentage point rise. The relative change (44.88%) indicates how significant this increase is compared to the original value (0.57 ÷ 1.27 = 44.88%).

Business, Operations, and Management Fields See the Strongest Growth

Growth between the first and second half of the year is led by people- and operations-focused disciplines. Human resources tops the list with nearly 69% growth, followed closely by management and industrial engineering, each rising by around 60%. Business-related fields, including general business, business administration, and communications, also show strong momentum, with gains in the low-to-mid 30% range. Finance, economics, and accounting post steady increases above 20%, while marketing grows at a more modest pace. Engineering stands out as the most stable field, showing only slight growth despite its large overall presence, suggesting demand is shifting more toward organizational, operational, and business-centric expertise than core technical credentials alone.

Fields of Study with Declining Demand

Design and Computer-Focused Degrees See the Sharpest Drop in Employer Demand

Several design-related fields experienced the steepest pullback in the second half of the year, with UX design falling by more than 55% and graphic design declining nearly 49%. Human-computer interaction and interaction design also saw drops exceeding 44%, signaling a broad slowdown across design-centric disciplines. Core technical fields weren’t immune either: information technology fell more than 26%, computer engineering dropped nearly 25%, and computer science declined by about 20% despite remaining one of the most common requirements overall. By contrast, fields like software engineering and data science posted comparatively smaller reductions, suggesting that while demand softened across the board, employers continue to prioritize applied technical skills over more specialized or academic design paths.

Equivalent Experience Acceptance

Equivalent Experience Acceptance by Company Size

Larger Companies Are Far More Open to Experience-Based Hiring

Acceptance of equivalent experience rises steadily with company size, starting at just under 7% among the smallest employers and increasing with each growth tier. Mid-sized organizations with 251–1,000 employees accept experience in place of formal degrees at more than 10%, signaling a clear shift toward skills-first hiring as companies scale. The most pronounced openness appears among enterprises with 1,000+ employees, where over 13% of roles drop strict degree requirements altogether. This pattern suggests that larger organizations, with more established training, evaluation frameworks, and internal mobility, are better positioned to hire based on proven experience rather than credentials alone.

Top Job Categories Accepting Equivalent Experience

Security and Tech Roles Lead the Shift Away From Degree Requirements

Information security stands out as the most flexible field, with more than one in five roles open to candidates who bring relevant experience instead of formal degrees. Media, communications, and law enforcement roles follow at roughly 12%, while software and IT positions sit close behind, reinforcing the idea that hands-on skills often outweigh academic credentials in technical work. Customer support, HR, operations, and analytics roles also show meaningful openness, generally clustering around the 9–11% range. Overall, the pattern suggests that experience-based hiring is most established in fields where practical ability, real-world problem solving, and situational judgment matter more than formal education alone.

Artificial intelligence

AI Skills

AI Dominates Job Requirements as Specialized Skills Rapidly Follow

Broad AI expertise overwhelmingly leads employer requirements, with more than 16,500 postings referencing AI or artificial intelligence in some form. Demand then quickly narrows into specific capabilities, as tools tied to AI platforms, generative AI, and technical implementation appear in thousands of roles. Mentions of AI tools alone show up in nearly 5,800 postings, while generative AI follows closely behind at about 4,800. Beyond the core skill, employers increasingly call out integration, systems, frameworks, and governance, signaling a shift from experimentation to operational maturity. The emergence of AI agents as a distinct requirement, even at a smaller scale, highlights how rapidly new specializations are entering mainstream job expectations.

Industry

Industry Concentration in Our Top Cities

How we came up with our rankings

We introduce a new approach to examining how industries are distributed across North American cities. Rather than relying on raw job posting volume, which tends to favor larger metropolitan areas, this view measures the share of each city’s total job listings attributed to a given industry.

The resulting heatmap ranks cities by industry concentration, surfacing the top five locations where each sector makes up the largest proportion of local job opportunities. This approach addresses several limitations common in traditional labor analyses. By normalizing within each city, it reduces the impact of regional overrepresentation in our user base and adjusts for differences in population size, allowing smaller cities with strong industry presence to stand alongside major employment hubs.

Importantly, a high concentration does not imply the highest number of available roles overall. Instead, it highlights where an industry plays an outsized role in the local job market.

Tech Hubs Lead the Rankings, but Several Cities Stand Out by Industry Strength

Internet and software roles are heavily concentrated in a handful of West Coast metros, with San Francisco alone accounting for more than half of top-ranked positions in that sector, followed closely by Bellevue and Seattle at just over 50% each. Professional services show a more distributed pattern, led by Winnipeg at roughly 38%, with Raleigh, Washington, D.C., and Nashville each hovering around the 25–30% range. Media roles peak in Los Angeles at about 14%, while New York and Vancouver trail in the high single digits. Health care and education rankings skew toward mid-sized cities, with Nashville and Salt Lake City reaching double-digit shares in health-related roles and Palo Alto exceeding 5% in education services. These figures underscore how certain industries are deeply tied to specific local ecosystems, rather than being evenly spread across major metros.

Location Requirements

Location Requirements by Company Size

Larger Companies Are More Likely to Keep Work Location Vague

Work location expectations shift noticeably as company size increases. Smaller employers are far more likely to advertise remote roles, with nearly a third of postings from companies under 50 employees offering fully remote work. As organizations grow, that share steadily declines, while hybrid and onsite roles become more common. At the same time, large companies, especially those with 1,000+ employees, are the most likely to omit location details altogether, with over half of postings avoiding any clear work arrangement. This pattern suggests that scale often brings more standardized hiring processes, where flexibility exists but is communicated less explicitly than it is among smaller, more agile teams.

Location Requirements by Job Category

Work Arrangement Clarity Varies Sharply by Job Function

Across job categories, clear differences emerge in how employers approach work arrangements. Customer support, writing, sales, and creative roles lean most heavily toward remote options, while technology and product roles show a more balanced mix of remote, hybrid, and onsite expectations. In contrast, fields tied to physical presence, such as healthcare, transportation, retail, and administrative work, remain dominated by onsite roles, with little to no hybrid flexibility. Finance and legal positions stand out for their higher reliance on hybrid setups, suggesting structured in-office collaboration without full-time presence. Overall, flexibility appears closely tied to the nature of the work, with knowledge-based roles offering far more location freedom than operational or service-driven functions.

Monthly Trends in Location Requirements

Remote and Hybrid Roles Continue to Shrink as Location Silence Grows

Over the course of 2025, job postings steadily moved away from clearly defined work arrangements, with roles that don’t specify a location becoming increasingly common. Remote opportunities declined month by month after an early-year peak, while hybrid roles also edged downward as the year progressed. Onsite positions fluctuated but remained relatively stable compared to the sharper shifts elsewhere. By year’s end, more than half of postings avoided mentioning any location expectation at all, signaling a growing preference among employers to keep flexibility ambiguous rather than commit to remote, hybrid, or fully in-office setups.

Skills Requirements

Skill Requirement Count By Job Category

Technical Roles Demand the Broadest Skill Sets

Software & IT roles show the highest skill expectations, with a median of 13 skills per job and a typical range spanning from 10 at the 25th percentile to 17 at the 75th percentile. Information Security follows closely, also centered at 13 skills, reflecting similarly dense requirements. Most professional categories, including Data & Analytics, Creative & Design, Marketing, Consulting, and Operations, cluster tightly around a median of 10–11 skills, indicating a fairly standardized baseline across knowledge-driven roles. At the other end of the spectrum, Transportation & Logistics roles stand out with a median of 5 skills and a narrow range, underscoring more focused job requirements. Overall, the spread between the 25th and 75th percentiles highlights how seniority, specialization, and employer expectations expand skill breadth most sharply in technical and security-focused careers.

Top Skills by Company Size

Startup Job Posts Skew Toward Modern Build-and-Ship Skills, While Enterprise Leans Process and Governance

Startup postings over-index on product-building and modern dev stacks: React (1.11% vs 0.48%), TypeScript (0.89% vs 0.32%), JavaScript (1.26% vs 0.83%), and Figma (1.02% vs 0.63%) all show clear startup lift, alongside tooling like Next.js (0.19% vs 0.04%), Docker (0.46% vs 0.32%), and AWS (0.54% vs 0.34%). Enterprise postings, by contrast, put more weight on operational scale and coordination—Project Management (1.55% vs 1.11%), Analytical Skills (1.14% vs 0.76%), Data Analysis (1.29% vs 0.96%), Leadership (0.69% vs 0.42%), and Agile (0.66% vs 0.45%) rise meaningfully on the enterprise side. Some themes are “everywhere” regardless of company type, with Communication appearing at 2.62% (startup) vs 2.49% (enterprise) and Collaboration at 1.83% vs 1.66%, suggesting soft skills remain table stakes even as the technical stack diverges.

Top Skills by Job Category

Communication Consolidates Its Lead as the Defining Skill Across Modern Roles

Communication now stands as the single most dominant skill across every major job category analyzed for Q1–Q4 2025, consistently outranking technical and role-specific requirements once duplicate listings are consolidated. It reaches its highest concentration in Sales & Business Development, where communication appears in 71.71% of job postings, far surpassing core technical or platform skills like Salesforce (16.08%) or negotiation (16.59%).

That same pattern holds across other fields, though with different balances. In Product Management, communication requirements (63.04%) nearly match the prevalence of product management itself (64.4%), underscoring the role’s heavy emphasis on cross-functional alignment and stakeholder influence. Marketing & Advertising follows closely, with communication featured in 52.72% of listings, well ahead of channel-specific skills like SEO (13.29%) or social media (11.38%).

Technical disciplines still demand deep specialization, but communication remains foundational. In Data & Analytics, SQL (67.8%) and Python (60.03%) dominate the skill stack, yet communication still appears in over 54% of roles, reinforcing the need to translate insights into action. Creative & Design shows a similar duality: while Figma leads at 59.7%, communication is nearly as prevalent at 52.23%, reflecting the collaborative nature of modern design teams. Even in Software & IT, traditionally viewed as code-centric, communication rivals top programming languages at 34.04%, nearly matching Python’s 35.47%.

The takeaway is clear: while each field maintains its own technical gatekeepers, SQL, Figma, Python, or domain-specific platforms, employers overwhelmingly prioritize professionals who can communicate clearly, collaborate effectively, and operate across teams. Technical skills may open the door, but communication is what determines impact, progression, and long-term success.

Software & IT - Python (35.47%), Communication (34.04%), and JavaScript (28.61%) round out the top three for the most desirable skills in Software & IT.

Data & Analytics - SQL (67.8%), Communication (54.07%), and Python (60.03%) round out the top three for the most desirable skills in Data & Analytics.

Creative & Design - Figma (59.7%), Communication (52.23%), and Collaboration (46.93%) round out the top three for the most desirable skills in Creative & Design.

Product Management - Product management (64.4%), Communication (63.04%), and Data analysis (30.87%) round out the top three for the most desirable skills in Product Management.

Sales & Business Development - Communication (71.71%), Sales (35.93%), and Negotiation (16.59%) round out the top three for the most desirable skills in Sales & Business Development.

Information Security - Communication (50.47%), Incident response (29.21%), and Cybersecurity (27.32%) round out the top three for the most desirable skills in Information Security.

Marketing & Advertising - Communication (52.72%), Project management (34.64%), and Data analysis (24.2%) round out the top three for the most desirable skills in Marketing & Advertising.

Top Growing Skills Overall

Leadership and AI Capabilities Lead the Fastest-Growing Skills Across the Job Market

Using skills extracted from job postings that appeared in both halves of the year, we compared H1 and H2 performance across two normalized metrics: job-market-adjusted growth, which captures how quickly a skill’s share of all postings increased, and company-adjusted growth, which measures how broadly that skill spread across distinct hiring organizations.

The strongest gains sit at the intersection of leadership and emerging technology. AI tools stand out as the fastest-rising skill overall, with job-market-adjusted growth exceeding 155% and company adoption climbing more than 100%, signaling rapid, market-wide experimentation with AI capabilities. Alongside it, leadership-oriented skills such as executive communication, cross-functional leadership, and executive presence all post job-market growth above 90%, underscoring how quickly employers are elevating expectations around influence, coordination, and decision-making.

A second tier of fast climbers reflects operational and systems-level thinking. Skills like operational excellence, systems thinking, and observability show strong parallel movement in both metrics, indicating that companies and job demand are expanding in step as organizations scale infrastructure and processes. Meanwhile, AI-adjacent capabilities, AI integration, LangChain, vector databases, and prompt engineering, continue to surface throughout the top growth ranks, reinforcing that AI adoption is spreading beyond experimentation into production-ready roles.

Notably, job demand often outpaces company adoption for leadership and financial skills. Financial acumen, P&L management, and strategic leadership exhibit significantly higher job-market growth than company-adjusted growth, suggesting employers are advertising these capabilities faster than they are fully embedding them across organizations. The pattern points to a hiring landscape where influence, coordination, and AI fluency are becoming baseline differentiators, creating clear opportunities for candidates who can combine technical understanding with leadership execution as companies race to keep up.

Skills Gap

To map today's skills gap, we combined two sides of the Huntr platform:

• Demand (jobs). We analyzed every public job posting created since July 1, 2025, mapping various job-title keywords into 9 broader role categories, then deduplicated by company + title. For each role, we counted how many of those distinct postings mention every hard skill (soft-skill keywords were excluded). Our analysis covered 171 distinct skills across roles, including Backend Developer, Frontend Developer, DevOps Engineer, Data Analyst, Mobile Developer, QA Engineer, Data Engineer, Data Scientist, and Full Stack Developer.
• Supply (resumes). On the same timeline, we examined "base" resumes that job-seekers built in Huntr, matched each resume's target job title to the same 9 role categories, and cataloged the hard skills users explicitly added to their profiles.

From those two pools, we calculate three key metrics for every skill within each role:

• Demand % measures how frequently employers request a given skill within a role category. We calculate it by dividing the number of job postings that mention the skill by the total number of postings for that role. For example, JavaScript appears in 100% of Frontend Developer job postings, while API skills are mentioned in 35.7% of Backend Developer positions.
• Supply % captures how common that skill is among job-seekers. We compute it by dividing the number of resumes that list the skill by the total number of resumes targeting the same role. A higher value means a larger share of candidates claim the capability - for instance, 15.6% of Frontend Developer candidates list JavaScript skills.
• Gap ratio puts the two together by dividing Demand % by Supply %. A ratio near 1 indicates balance; anything above 1 signals a shortage (employers want the skill more often than candidates offer it), while values below 1 suggest an oversupply. Our data reveals significant gaps, with API skills showing the highest ratio at 8.7x, meaning companies request this skill nearly 9 times more often than candidates list it.

Software Development Skills Gap Analysis

Software & Development Skills Reveal Extreme Infrastructure Shortages While Core Practices Near Equilibrium

• Cloud platforms represent the most severe talent gap in software roles, with demand at 4.28% of job listings versus just 0.07% supply on resumes, producing a 64.12× gap. This underscores how cloud-native architecture remains one of the scarcest and most sought-after capabilities despite widespread adoption efforts.
• Backend and data-layer expertise continues to lag demand, as relational databases show a 14.38× gap (4.08% demand vs 0.28% supply), while software development fundamentals post an 11.63× gap (10.86% vs 0.93%). These shortages highlight persistent pressure on core engineering and system design skills.
• Mid-tier technical domains reflect sustained but less extreme shortages, with software engineering at a 7.06× gap, APIs at 4.90×, and DevOps at 3.13× (6.94% demand vs 2.22% supply). These areas sit between foundational knowledge and deep infrastructure specialization, signaling steady hiring demand without total scarcity.
• Foundational development practices show much closer supply–demand alignment, indicating mature talent pools. Agile stands at a 1.48× gap (16.43% demand vs 11.07% supply), while debugging (1.94×) and object-oriented programming (1.39×) suggest that core programming competencies are broadly available in the labor market.
• The broader pattern is clear: while general development skills and methodologies have reached relative equilibrium, specialized infrastructure expertise, particularly cloud platforms and large-scale data systems, remains the software sector’s most acute hiring bottleneck, creating outsized opportunity for candidates with deep systems and cloud architecture experience.

Data and Analytics Skills Gap Analysis

Data & Analytics Roles Show Acute Engineering Shortages While Analytical Skills Approach Balance

• Data engineering represents the most severe shortage in analytics roles, with demand at 11.88% of job listings versus just 0.98% supply, creating a 12.16× gap. This highlights a critical lack of talent capable of building and maintaining scalable data infrastructure.
• Core analytical capabilities also remain undersupplied, as data analysis shows a 3.97× gap (39.38% demand vs 9.92% supply) and data science posts a 4.14× gap (7.32% vs 1.77%), indicating that insight-generation skills continue to outpace available talent.
• Pipeline and reliability-focused skills reveal persistent mid-tier gaps, with data pipelines at 4.88×, data quality at 3.82×, and ETL at 2.03×. These gaps suggest organizations are struggling to operationalize analytics at scale, not just analyze results.
• Governance and structure skills show moderate strain, as data governance carries a 2.41× gap, reflecting growing regulatory and organizational pressure to formalize data ownership, controls, and standards.
• Visualization and advanced modeling skills are closest to equilibrium, with data visualization (1.84×), machine learning (1.77×), and data modeling (1.96×) indicating healthier talent coverage. The overall pattern suggests that while many professionals can analyze and present data, far fewer can engineer the systems that make analytics reliable, scalable, and production-ready, making data engineering the defining bottleneck in the analytics labor market.

Design Skills Gap Analysis

Design Roles Show Strong Demand for Product and UX Skills While Visual Execution Nears Balance

• Product-focused design skills represent the largest gaps, with product design showing a 3.40× gap (36.19% demand vs 10.63% supply) and user experience at 4.53× (17.42% vs 3.85%). This highlights sustained hiring pressure for designers who can shape end-to-end user journeys and product strategy.
• Core UX disciplines remain significantly undersupplied, as UX design posts a 3.02× gap and UI design a 2.04× gap, signaling continued difficulty hiring designers who can translate research into usable, scalable interfaces.
• SaaS and hybrid design capabilities show elevated strain, with SaaS design experience at 4.57× and UI/UX design at 2.28×, reflecting the premium placed on designers who understand subscription products and complex workflows.
• Strategic design frameworks show moderate pressure, including user-centered design at 2.21×, indicating that while the methodology is widely discussed, fewer candidates demonstrate deep, applied expertise.
• Execution-focused skills approach supply–demand equilibrium, as visual design sits at just 1.39× (33.32% demand vs 23.98% supply), with motion design, accessibility standards, research, and agile all below 2× gaps. The broader pattern suggests that while visual craft is abundant, designers who combine UX strategy, product thinking, and SaaS context remain the most constrained, and most valuable, talent in the design market.

Product Management Skills Gap Analysis

Product Management Roles Show Acute Leadership and Domain Gaps While Execution Skills Near Balance

• Product management itself is the most constrained capability, with demand appearing in 76.36% of listings versus 12.51% supply, producing a 6.10× gap. This reflects a broad shortage of candidates who can own strategy, execution, and outcomes end-to-end.
• Domain-specific product expertise drives the next largest gaps, particularly B2B SaaS (5.62×) and general SaaS experience (3.95×), signaling strong employer preference for PMs with prior exposure to subscription products and complex go-to-market motions.
• AI-adjacent and UX-aligned skills are rising sharply, with AI at a 5.07× gap and user experience at 4.89×, underscoring growing demand for PMs who can guide AI features and translate user needs into product decisions.
• Analytical and technical fluency show moderate strain, as data analysis posts a 2.76× gap and software development knowledge a 3.90× gap, indicating that employers increasingly expect PMs to operate comfortably with data and engineering teams.
• Execution-oriented practices are closest to equilibrium, with project management (1.80×), machine learning familiarity (1.80×), agile development (1.71×), and roadmap development (1.53×) suggesting healthier talent coverage. Overall, the product management labor market rewards candidates who pair execution basics with strategic ownership, SaaS context, and AI or UX depth, where the sharpest shortages, and strongest opportunities, remain.

Administrative and Virtual Assistance Skills Gap Analysis

Administrative & Virtual Assistance Roles Show Targeted Tool Gaps While Core Office Skills Near Equilibrium

• Specialized productivity tooling presents the sharpest shortages, led by MS Office proficiency at a 3.96× gap (6.16% demand vs 1.56% supply). Despite the ubiquity of office software, fewer candidates explicitly signal advanced or role-ready proficiency.
• Logistics-heavy responsibilities show moderate strain, with travel arrangements (2.41×) and travel coordination (2.21×) indicating persistent gaps in candidates experienced with complex scheduling, bookings, and itinerary management.
• Communication and scheduling platforms remain moderately undersupplied, as Microsoft Outlook posts a 2.05× gap, reflecting employer expectations for inbox management, calendaring, and coordination that exceed resume signaling.
• Core document and presentation skills are closer to balance, including PowerPoint (1.69×), Word (1.56×), and Excel (1.42×), suggesting that foundational office capabilities are broadly available in the talent pool.
• High-level office fluency approaches equilibrium, with Microsoft Office as a bundle at just 1.61× (22.27% demand vs 13.81% supply). Overall, the administrative labor market rewards candidates who go beyond generic office familiarity and clearly demonstrate operational ownership, especially in travel coordination, scheduling complexity, and tool-specific mastery, where hiring friction remains highest.

Job Search Survey Insights

Job Search Experience

Most Job Seekers Search 1-6 Months, But 1 in 4 Face Year-Long Hunts

Nearly a quarter of job seekers have been actively looking for work for 1-3 months, representing the most common timeframe among respondents. Another fifth have extended their search to 4-6 months, while 14% have been searching for 1-2 years. The 7-9 month mark captures 13% of job seekers, and about 10% have been in the market for over 2 years. Shorter search periods are less common, with only 6% finding themselves in the 2-4 weeks range and 5% in their first two weeks. Roughly 8% have been searching for 10-12 months. The distribution reveals that most job seekers experience search periods lasting several months, with the majority falling between 1-6 months, though a significant portion face prolonged searches extending beyond a year.

Job Search Timelines Mirror Across Genders, With Most Finding Roles Within Six Months

Job search durations show remarkably similar patterns across gender lines, with both women and men most commonly searching for 1-3 months (22% and 27% respectively) or 4-6 months (22% and 18% respectively). Women represent a slight majority among those in the 4-6 month range, while men show stronger representation in the 1-3 month category. The 7-9 month mark captures 14% of women and 11% of men, while those searching for 1-2 years account for 14% of women and 14% of men. Extended searches lasting over 2 years affect 8% of women and 11% of men. Non-binary respondents, though representing a smaller sample, mirror these broader patterns with concentration in the 1-6 month range. Those who prefer not to disclose their gender identity show a distinct pattern, with 47% searching for over 2 years and 33% in the 1-2 year range, suggesting this group may face unique challenges or represent individuals in particularly specialized fields.

Millennials Lead Job Search Numbers While Baby Boomers Face Longest Hunts

Job search length increases noticeably with age, and the gaps are stark when you look at the numbers. Among Generation Z, nearly 37% are searching for work for three months or less (46 people in the 1–3 month range, plus 27 under two weeks and 14 at 2–4 weeks), while only 18% report searches lasting a year or longer. Millennials show a similar but slower pattern: 30% are in the 1–3 month window (131 respondents), yet nearly 25% have been searching for one year or more (85 at 1–2 years and 50 over two years). The balance shifts further for Generation X, where 23% are in the market for at least a year (43 searching 1–2 years and 30 over two years), compared to 22% searching just 1–3 months. The most pronounced concentration of long-term searches appears among Baby Boomers, where 40% report looking for work for a year or longer, including nearly 23% who have been searching for over two years alone. Together, the figures show a clear progression: as careers advance, job searches become longer, slower, and harder to exit.

Remote Work Dominates as Top Choice Among Job Seekers

Nearly half of all respondents prefer working remotely, with 498 people (47.5%) choosing this option as their ideal work arrangement. Hybrid work comes in as a close second preference, selected by 445 individuals (42.4%), showing strong interest in flexible arrangements that blend home and office time. Only 106 respondents (10.1%) prefer working fully onsite, highlighting a dramatic shift in workplace expectations. The overwhelming preference for remote and hybrid options, accounting for nearly 90% of all responses, reveals that location flexibility has become a critical factor in job satisfaction and career decisions. This trend suggests employers may need to embrace flexible work policies to attract and retain top talent in today's competitive market.

Women Show Stronger Preference for Remote Work Than Men

Gender differences emerge in workplace location preferences, with women gravitating more heavily toward remote arrangements. Among those choosing remote work, women represent nearly 60% (297 respondents) compared to men at 38% (189 respondents). The pattern shifts when examining hybrid work preferences, where the split becomes more balanced, 223 women and 212 men favor this flexible approach. Onsite work shows the most notable gender disparity, with men selecting this option at a higher rate: 64 men prefer onsite compared to just 41 women. This suggests women may place higher value on the autonomy and flexibility that remote work provides, while men show slightly more openness to traditional office environments. The trend could reflect different caregiving responsibilities, commute considerations, or varying comfort levels with office culture. Understanding these gender-based preferences becomes crucial for organizations aiming to create inclusive work policies that attract and retain diverse talent across all demographics.

Millennials Lead Remote Work Revolution While Baby Boomers Buck the Trend

Millennials dominate the remote work landscape, accounting for more than half (56.2%) of all workers choosing this arrangement, with 280 respondents selecting it as their preference. Generation X follows with 149 remote workers (29.9%), while Generation Z shows surprisingly lower adoption at just 52 respondents (10.4%). The hybrid model reveals a more balanced distribution, though Millennials still claim the largest share with 219 people (49.2%), followed closely by Generation X at 135 (30.3%). What stands out most is the Baby Boomer pattern: despite being the smallest group surveyed at just 35 people, they show the highest preference for onsite work proportionally, with nearly one-third (10 of 35) choosing to work from the office full-time. This contrasts sharply with younger generations, who overwhelmingly favor flexibility. The generational divide suggests that workplace culture expectations have shifted dramatically, with younger workers viewing location flexibility not as a perk but as a fundamental requirement, while older professionals maintain stronger connections to traditional office environments.

Ghosting and Unrealistic Expectations Top Job Seeker Frustrations

Job seekers report ghosting after multiple interview rounds as their biggest red flag, with 230 people citing this as their top concern, representing 22% of responses. Close behind, 184 respondents (17.5%) flagged unrealistic expectations like cramming three roles into one position. Refusal to share salary information ranked third with 148 mentions, highlighting ongoing transparency issues in hiring processes. Together, these top three concerns account for more than half of all responses, revealing a clear pattern: candidates are increasingly frustrated by employers who waste their time, overload their responsibilities, or hide crucial compensation details. The message is clear: job seekers value respect, honesty, and realistic expectations above all else when evaluating potential employers.

Applications and Interviews

LinkedIn Easy Apply Fails to Deliver Interviews for Nearly 3 in 4 Job Seekers

The convenience of LinkedIn's Easy Apply feature comes with a sobering reality check: only 27.5% of job seekers report that it has led to at least one interview in 2025. Among 1,049 respondents, a striking 760 people, representing 72.5% of those surveyed, said the one-click application tool has not resulted in any interview opportunities this year. This reveals a significant gap between the ease of applying and actual hiring outcomes. While Easy Apply removes friction from the application process, the numbers suggest that this streamlined approach may not be translating into meaningful engagement with hiring managers. Job seekers relying heavily on this feature might need to reconsider their strategy and complement it with more targeted, personalized applications to improve their chances of landing interviews.

Most Job Seekers Face Radio Silence After Interviews

Interview ghosting has become an unfortunate norm in today's hiring landscape. Nearly 90% of job seekers report experiencing this frustrating phenomenon at least occasionally, with over a third saying it happens about half the time they interview. Only 10% have been fortunate enough to never encounter this lack of communication from employers. The problem is particularly acute for those experiencing frequent ghosting; roughly one in three candidates report being left in the dark either "often" or "very often" after going through the interview process. This widespread breakdown in professional courtesy leaves candidates in limbo, unable to move forward confidently in their job search or understand where they stand with potential employers.

Men Report Higher Rates of Frequent Interview Ghosting

While interview ghosting affects job seekers across all gender identities, the frequency varies notably between groups. Male candidates report experiencing ghosting "often" at a higher rate (24.1%) compared to their female counterparts (15.3%), suggesting men may face more consistent communication breakdowns during the hiring process. However, female job seekers are slightly more likely to encounter ghosting "sometimes" (36.9% vs 33.3% for men). The pattern holds relatively consistent across the frequency spectrum, only 11.2% of women and 8.8% of men have never experienced this phenomenon. For non-binary candidates and those who prefer not to disclose their gender, sample sizes are smaller, but the trend remains similar, with the majority reporting at least occasional ghosting. Among those preferring not to say their gender, 63.6% report experiencing ghosting "sometimes," the highest rate in any category. These patterns indicate that while the problem is nearly universal, men appear to face a higher likelihood of being left without closure after interviews.

Younger Job Seekers Bear the Brunt of Interview Ghosting

Ghosting after interviews is a near-universal experience, but its frequency rises sharply among younger generations. Millennials and Generation Z report the highest exposure, with nearly seven in ten saying they’re ghosted at least sometimes, and a sizable share experiencing it often or very often. Generation X falls in the middle, while Baby Boomers are far more likely to say it happens infrequently or not at all. The pattern suggests that as hiring processes scale, automate, and stretch over longer timelines, silence has become a defining feature of the modern job search, felt most acutely by those navigating the market today.

One-Third of Job Seekers Face Illegal Interview Questions

Despite clear legal prohibitions, illegal or inappropriate interview questions remain disturbingly common, with substantial numbers of candidates reporting various violations. While 721 responses indicated avoiding such questions entirely, the combined total of those who encountered improper inquiries reveals widespread disregard for employment law. Age discrimination leads the violations at 101 responses, followed closely by intrusive questions about children or pregnancy plans (93) and marital status (88), all protected categories under discrimination law. Financial probing about credit scores, debt, or previous salary generated 73 responses, while 68 reported ethnicity or nationality questions. Health and disability inquiries affected 52 candidates, while questions about religion and sexual orientation each garnered 33 responses. Even political views, typically considered off-limits, came up in 21 interviews. The 38 who reported "something else inappropriate" suggests additional violations beyond the listed categories. These illegal questions aren't isolated incidents but represent systematic failures in hiring practices, where interviewers either remain ignorant of legal boundaries or deliberately ignore them. For candidates, each inappropriate question creates an impossible dilemma: answer and potentially face discrimination, refuse and risk appearing uncooperative, or report it and likely end candidacy.

Over Half of Job Seekers Face Unpaid Work Requests During Interview Process

The job interview landscape reveals a concerning trend: 56% of candidates report being asked to complete unpaid assignments, projects, or test tasks when applying for positions. While the majority of these requests are limited to just one or two instances (362 respondents), a significant portion of job seekers encounter this practice repeatedly throughout their search. Among those affected, 152 candidates faced unpaid work requests 3-4 times, 49 experienced them 5-9 times, and 23 individuals were asked to complete free work 10 or more times during their job hunt. Though 463 candidates avoided this practice entirely, the prevalence of unpaid assignment requests raises questions about fair hiring practices and the value placed on candidates' time and expertise during the recruitment process.

Women Report Unpaid Interview Assignments More Frequently Than Men

When examining unpaid work requests across gender lines, notable patterns emerge in how frequently candidates encounter this practice. Among female job seekers, 58% (325 of 561) were asked to complete unpaid assignments, projects, or test tasks during interviews, with 209 experiencing this 1-2 times and 116 facing multiple requests. Male candidates saw a slightly lower rate, with 54% (249 of 465) encountering unpaid work demands, 145 reporting 1-2 instances and 104 dealing with repeated requests. While sample sizes are smaller for non-binary candidates and those preferring not to disclose gender, the patterns suggest that unpaid assignment requests are prevalent across all gender identities. The higher frequency among women raises questions about whether gender plays a role in how companies evaluate candidates and whether certain groups face additional hurdles in proving their capabilities during the hiring process.

Over 1 in 10 Job Seekers Had Offers Revoked in 2025

The job market delivered a harsh reality check for many professionals in 2025, with 11% of survey respondents reporting that an employer withdrew an offer after initially extending it. While the majority (89%) didn't experience this setback, the phenomenon affects a significant minority of candidates. Offer rescissions can occur for various reasons, budget cuts, hiring freezes, internal restructuring, or finding a supposedly "better fit, "but regardless of the cause, they leave candidates in a difficult position, often having turned down other opportunities or made life decisions based on the expectation of employment. This trend underscores the precarious nature of today's hiring landscape, where even a signed offer letter doesn't always guarantee a new role will materialize.

Men Experience Job Offer Rescissions at Nearly Double the Rate of Women

A striking gender disparity emerges when examining whose job offers get pulled back after acceptance. While 15% of male job seekers had offers withdrawn in 2025, only 9% of women faced the same fate. This means men were 67% more likely to experience this frustrating setback. The pattern holds across absolute numbers as well: 68 men reported rescinded offers compared to 48 women, despite female respondents outnumbering males in the survey (561 versus 465). Non-binary respondents experienced a 25% withdrawal rate, the highest among all groups, though the small sample size of eight people makes it difficult to draw definitive conclusions. Notably, all 15 respondents who declined to specify their gender avoided having offers pulled. These findings raise questions about whether certain industries or roles attract different gender distributions, whether negotiation tactics vary by gender in ways that affect offer stability, or whether unconscious bias plays a role in which candidates see their opportunities evaporate before they can start.

Gen Z Faces Highest Rate of Job Offer Rescissions Across All Generations

The youngest professionals in the workforce are experiencing withdrawn job offers at nearly double the rate of their older counterparts. Nearly 15% of Gen Z respondents, 24 out of 162, had employers pull back offers after extending them, compared to just 8.6% of Baby Boomers who faced this setback. Millennials fall in the middle with an 11.5% withdrawal rate (62 out of 538 respondents), while Generation X experiences a 9.2% rate (29 out of 314). This troubling trend suggests that newer workforce entrants may be more vulnerable to volatile hiring decisions, whether because they're competing for entry-level positions where budgets fluctuate more readily, lack the negotiating leverage of experienced professionals, or face employers who view younger candidates as more expendable. The generational gap reveals that age and experience may provide some insulation against this increasingly common frustration, leaving those just starting their careers to navigate an especially unpredictable job market.

Resume and Qualifications

Nearly Half of Job Seekers Hide Experience to Appear Less Qualified

In a revealing look at modern hiring dynamics, 47% of respondents admitted to deliberately removing or reducing their professional experience when applying for positions, a strategic move to avoid appearing overqualified. This means 493 job seekers have felt compelled to downplay their accomplishments and skills, fearing that presenting their full credentials might actually hurt their chances of landing a role. While 556 respondents (53%) said they've never taken this approach, the near-even split reveals a widespread anxiety about how employers perceive seasoned candidates. The practice of "dumbing down" resumes speaks to a paradox in today's job market: having too much experience can be just as much of a barrier as having too little, forcing qualified professionals to hide their strengths rather than showcase them.

Women More Likely to Hide Credentials When Job Hunting

The practice of downplaying professional experience to avoid appearing overqualified affects women at notably higher rates than men. Among female respondents, 49% admitted to removing or reducing their credentials on applications, a near-even split that reveals widespread concern about being perceived as too experienced. Male job seekers showed more confidence in presenting their full qualifications, with 44% reporting they've hidden experience compared to 56% who haven't. The pattern suggests women face a more delicate balancing act in the hiring process, potentially reflecting broader workplace dynamics where female candidates worry their extensive experience might be viewed as threatening rather than valuable. While smaller sample sizes make trends less definitive for non-binary respondents and those preferring not to disclose gender, the gender gap between female and male job seekers points to persistent inequities in how professional achievement is perceived and rewarded across different demographics.

Gen X Bears the Brunt of Overqualification Anxiety

Generation X professionals are significantly more likely to downplay their credentials when job hunting, with 59% admitting they've removed or reduced experience on applications. This contrasts sharply with Generation Z, where only 28% have felt compelled to hide their qualifications, suggesting younger workers either haven't accumulated enough experience to face this dilemma or feel less threatened by appearing overqualified. Millennials fall in the middle at 44%, while Baby Boomers show a 66% rate of credential-hiding, though their smaller sample size (just 35 respondents total) makes this less definitive. The Generation X pattern is particularly striking: these mid-career professionals, typically aged 44-59, appear caught in a precarious position where their deep experience becomes a liability rather than an asset. Having weathered multiple economic downturns and technological disruptions, Gen Xers may have learned the hard way that presenting their full professional history can price them out of opportunities or make hiring managers wary of retention risks.

Nearly Half of Job Seekers Report Bias Due to Employment Gaps

Employment gaps remain a significant hurdle in the hiring process, with 491 respondents, representing 47% of those surveyed, reporting they've faced discrimination or unfair judgment because of time away from work. While a slight majority (558 respondents, 53%) haven't experienced this bias, the split reveals a troubling reality: employers continue to penalize career interruptions despite the many legitimate reasons professionals step away from the workforce. Whether due to caregiving responsibilities, health issues, further education, or economic downturns, these breaks shouldn't define a candidate's capabilities. The nearly even divide suggests that while some companies have evolved their hiring practices to focus on skills and potential rather than resume continuity, many others still view employment gaps through a discriminatory lens that unfairly disadvantages qualified talent.

Layoffs Drive Most Employment Gaps, But Extended Job Searches Close Behind

Among job seekers who've experienced career interruptions, being laid off stands out as the most common reason, affecting 314 respondents, roughly 30% of those surveyed. However, nearly as many (291 people) report never having an employment gap at all, suggesting a sizable portion of the workforce has maintained continuous employment throughout their careers. The second-most cited reason reveals another sobering reality: 128 respondents simply couldn't find their next opportunity quickly enough, highlighting how challenging job markets can force unwanted breaks. Beyond these top reasons, career pauses span a diverse range of life circumstances, from caring for family members (63 respondents) and pursuing education (52) to addressing mental health needs (34) and managing relocations (38). Notably, 43 professionals used their time between traditional roles to build side hustles or freelance, transforming potential gaps into entrepreneurial opportunities. The variety of reasons underscores that employment interruptions rarely reflect poorly on a candidate's work ethic or capabilities, yet stigma persists in hiring practices despite these legitimate circumstances.

Job Seekers Overwhelmingly Believe AI, Not Humans, Reviews Their Resumes First

The vast majority of job seekers, 854 respondents representing 81% of those surveyed, believe artificial intelligence screens their resumes before any human ever sees them. This perception reflects the reality of modern recruiting, where applicant tracking systems and AI-powered tools have become gatekeepers in the hiring process. Only 119 people (11%) think a human recruiter or hiring manager reviews their application first, while 76 respondents (7%) hold an even more pessimistic view: they don't believe anyone reads their resume at all. This widespread awareness of AI's role in initial screening has profound implications for how candidates craft their applications, leading many to optimize resumes for algorithms rather than human readers. The belief, whether accurate or not, shapes job search strategies, with applicants increasingly focused on keyword optimization and ATS-friendly formatting rather than compelling narratives that might resonate with human decision-makers. This shift raises important questions about whether the efficiency gains of automated screening come at the cost of overlooking qualified candidates who don't fit algorithmic patterns.

Personal Finance

Most Cut Budgets, Drain Savings, or Skip Healthcare As Job Search Devastates Finances

The financial toll of extended job searches has pushed most workers into significant hardship, with lifestyle cuts (499 responses) and depleted emergency savings (419) representing the most common consequences. The cascading effects reveal a workforce in crisis: 289 filed for unemployment benefits, 271 accumulated credit card debt, and 261 skipped necessary medical or dental care to preserve cash. Beyond these widespread impacts, many faced more severe distress, 208 needed financial help from family or crowdfunding, 136 sold possessions, and 119 fell behind on utilities. The desperation deepens further down the list: 96 took personal loans, 85 fell into collections, and 162 total responses reported missing rent (70) or mortgage (45) payments or facing eviction (47). Only 189 respondents, representing just a small fraction, avoided financial hardship entirely, meaning the vast majority experienced multiple simultaneous pressures. This isn't simply unemployment's expected financial strain; it's a systematic erosion of financial security where job seekers simultaneously cut spending, liquidate assets, accumulate debt, and forego healthcare while burning through safety nets. The breadth of hardships suggests prolonged searches are devastating personal finances at rates that threaten long-term recovery even after reemployment.

52% of Workers Fear Recession Will Threaten Their Jobs

The specter of recession looms large over the workforce, with an overwhelming 548 respondents, representing 52% of those surveyed, describing themselves as either "very worried" or "extremely worried" about how an economic downturn would impact their ability to secure or maintain employment in the next six months. When adding those who are "moderately worried" (239 people, 23%), the picture becomes even starker: three-quarters of workers harbor significant concerns about their job security in uncertain economic times. Only 195 respondents (19%) report feeling "slightly worried," while a mere 67 people (6%) express no concern at all. This widespread anxiety reveals how vulnerable many professionals feel despite current employment, reflecting memories of past recessions, ongoing tech layoffs, and persistent economic uncertainty. The near-even split between those extremely/very worried and moderately/slightly worried suggests the workforce is divided between those actively bracing for impact and those cautiously monitoring the horizon, but almost everyone is watching.

61% Don't Expect Job Market Improvement in 2026

Looking ahead to the coming year, job seekers and workers express decidedly pessimistic expectations about hiring conditions, with 639 respondents, representing 61% of those surveyed, believing the job market will not improve in 2026 compared to 2025. Only 410 people (39%) hold out hope for better opportunities in the year ahead. This bleak outlook reflects ongoing economic uncertainty, persistent layoffs across industries, and the cumulative toll of a challenging hiring landscape that has left many professionals exhausted from lengthy job searches and uncertain about their career prospects. The nearly two-to-one ratio of pessimists to optimists suggests that recent labor market struggles have fundamentally shaken confidence in a near-term recovery. Whether driven by recession fears, concerns about AI displacing workers, or simply fatigue from navigating a difficult 2025, this widespread negativity indicates that most professionals are bracing for continued challenges rather than expecting relief. For employers and policymakers, this sentiment serves as a warning: without meaningful intervention or improvement, worker morale and engagement may suffer as people enter the new year expecting more of the same difficulties.

Nearly Half of Workers Have Less Than Three Months of Savings

The precarious financial position of many workers becomes starkly clear when examining survival timelines without employment income. A concerning 476 respondents, representing 45% of those surveyed, report they could sustain themselves for three months or less without a paycheck, with 190 people (18%) facing an even more dire situation of less than one month's financial runway. Another 239 respondents (23%) estimate they could manage for four to six months, while 194 (18%) believe they could stretch resources for six months to a year. Only 140 people (13%) possess the financial cushion to survive over a year without employment. This distribution reveals a workforce living largely paycheck-to-paycheck or close to it, where unexpected job loss could quickly spiral into crisis. The concentration of responses in the one-to-six-month range explains why prolonged job searches create such intense pressure and why workers often feel compelled to accept suboptimal positions rather than hold out for better opportunities. These thin margins leave little room for strategic career moves, extended job searches, or the ability to be selective about employers, contributing to a cycle where financial vulnerability limits professional advancement and negotiating power.

Nearly Half of Women Would Run Out of Savings Within Three Months

A striking gender divide emerges when examining financial resilience during unemployment. Nearly half of female respondents (48.3%) report they could survive three months or less without a paycheck, with 21.2% facing dire circumstances of less than one month's runway. Men demonstrate somewhat stronger financial cushions, with 41.2% in the same precarious under-three-month category and only 13.5% at risk within a month. The contrast becomes even sharper at the opposite end of the spectrum: 15.1% of men could sustain themselves over a year without employment income, compared to just 12.1% of women. Non-binary respondents face the most acute financial fragility, with a full 50% indicating they'd exhaust resources within a month, the highest percentage across all gender groups. Those preferring not to disclose gender identity show a mixed picture, with 26.7% facing immediate monthly pressure but 13.3% having over a year's financial buffer. These disparities underscore how systemic wage gaps, career interruptions, and caregiving responsibilities disproportionately impact women's ability to weather job loss, creating additional pressure to accept positions quickly rather than hold out for optimal opportunities.

Most Workers Define "Rich" as Earning Between $100K-$350K Annually

When asked what salary would make them feel wealthy, the majority of respondents set their sights on relatively modest figures compared to celebrity fortunes or executive compensation packages. A combined 640 people, representing 61% of those surveyed, believe earning between $100,000 and $349,999 annually would qualify them as rich, with nearly equal splits between the $100K-$199K range (318 respondents, 30%) and the $200K-$349K bracket (322 respondents, 31%). Another 183 people (17%) raise the bar to $350K-$499K, while progressively fewer respondents require higher thresholds: 113 (11%) say $500K-$749K, just 29 (3%) need $750K-$999K, and only 84 people (8%) insist on earning over $1 million to feel truly wealthy. This distribution reveals that for most professionals, "rich" doesn't mean mansions and private jets, it means comfortable middle-to-upper-middle-class stability, likely enough to cover housing in expensive metro areas, save for retirement, pay off student loans, and enjoy occasional luxuries without financial stress. The concentration around six-figure salaries suggests workers define wealth less by extravagance and more by the freedom from paycheck-to-paycheck living.

Women Set Lower "Rich" Thresholds Than Men

Perceptions of what constitutes being "rich" vary notably across gender lines, with women generally setting more modest income targets than their male counterparts. Nearly one-third of female respondents (32.6%) believe earning $100,000-$199,999 would make them feel wealthy, compared to just 27.1% of men, suggesting women have more conservative or realistic expectations about financial success. The pattern shifts in the middle ranges: 29.9% of women versus 32.5% of men identify $200,000-$349,999 as their wealth threshold. At the higher end, men show slightly greater ambition, with 12.7% requiring $500,000-$749,999 compared to 9.1% of women. The small sample of non-binary respondents reveals an interesting distribution, with half (50%) considering $100,000-$199,999 as rich, while none view $200,000-$349,999 or $750,000-$999,999 as necessary wealth markers. Perhaps most striking, those preferring not to disclose gender show the highest proportion (20%) requiring over $1 million to feel rich, more than double the percentage of women (8.4%) and men (7.1%) with such lofty expectations. These differences likely reflect persistent wage gaps, varied career trajectories, and different lived experiences with financial security across gender identities

Nearly Half of Gen Z Say $100K-$200K Makes You Rich

Generational perspectives on wealth reveal striking differences in financial expectations, with Gen Z showing the most modest definition of being "rich." Nearly half of Gen Z respondents (45.7%) believe earning $100,000-$199,999 annually qualifies as wealthy, significantly higher than any other generation. This contrasts sharply with Gen X, where only 22.9% consider that range sufficient for richness, and Millennials at 29.7%. Baby Boomers fall in between at 34.3%, though their small sample size warrants caution. The pattern reverses in higher salary brackets: Gen X shows the strongest appetite for the $200,000-$349,999 range (33.8%) and leads in the $350,000-$499,999 category (22.6%), suggesting this generation's wealth aspirations align with peak earning years and established careers. Millennials distribute fairly evenly across the lower and middle ranges, while their representation in the $1,000,000+ category (8.0%) matches Gen Z despite having more established careers. Gen Z's concentration at lower salary thresholds likely reflects their early career stage, student debt burdens, and coming of age during economic uncertainty, making six-figure salaries seem aspirationally wealthy rather than merely comfortable. These generational gaps underscore how life stage, economic conditions during formative years, and cost-of-living realities fundamentally shape what different cohorts consider financial success.

Lower Earners Set a Higher Bar for “Rich,” While High Earners Aim Even Higher

Perceptions of what it means to be “rich” rise sharply with income. Respondents earning under $30,000 or between $30,000 and $49,999 were far more likely to say that wealth starts at $100,000–$199,999, suggesting a closer, more attainable benchmark. As incomes increase, that definition shifts upward: those earning $75,000–$99,999 or more increasingly point to $200,000–$349,999 or higher as the threshold. Among the highest earners, particularly those already making over $300,000, expectations escalate dramatically, with half saying it takes at least $1 million to feel rich. The pattern is consistent: the more people earn, the further away “rich” becomes.

Most Job Seekers Slash Salary Expectations as Market Pressures Mount

Seven in ten job seekers have lowered their salary expectations in 2025, revealing significant pressure in the current employment landscape. While nearly a third are holding firm on their compensation requirements, the majority are making substantial concessions to secure positions. The adjustments vary widely: some are trimming their targets by less than $5,000, while others are accepting reductions exceeding $30,000. The largest group, 171 respondents, has lowered expectations by $5,000 to $9,999, suggesting many candidates are making moderate compromises. However, 130 job seekers have cut their salary targets by $30,000 or more, pointing to particularly challenging circumstances for certain segments of the market. This widespread recalibration of compensation expectations signals a notable shift in bargaining power between employers and candidates.

Cybersecurity and Job Scams

Most Job Seekers Avoid Scams, But Losses Reach Six Figures for Some

While the vast majority of job seekers, 89%, have successfully avoided financial losses from employment scams, a significant minority has fallen victim to fraudulent schemes. Among those affected, 62 respondents lost small amounts under $500, while 26 lost between $500 and $999. The losses escalate considerably for others: 29 people lost $1,000 to $4,999, and 13 experienced losses ranging from $5,000 to $19,999. Most alarmingly, four respondents reported catastrophic losses exceeding $100,000, highlighting the devastating financial impact these scams can inflict on unsuspecting job seekers. The spectrum of losses, from nominal amounts to life-altering sums, underscores both the pervasiveness of job scams and the varying sophistication of fraudulent schemes targeting people in career transition.

Men More Likely Than Women to Lose Money to Job Scams Especially at Higher Amounts

Women were more likely than men to report avoiding financial loss from job scams, with the vast majority saying they hadn’t lost any money at all. Men, by contrast, were disproportionately represented among those who did lose money, especially at higher dollar amounts. Losses under $500 were evenly split, but as amounts increased, men accounted for a larger share of victims, including most cases involving losses over $1,000 and nearly all of the highest-loss incidents. While scams clearly affect job seekers of all genders, the pattern suggests men are more likely to experience significant financial harm when scams do occur, whereas women are more likely to disengage before money changes hands.

Scammers Cast a Wide Net Across Job Search Platforms

LinkedIn tops the list of platforms where job seekers report encountering fraudulent postings, with 405 responses—though this likely reflects the platform's position as the largest professional network rather than a higher scam rate per user. Direct outreach through unsolicited texts and emails ranks second at 285 responses, followed by Indeed at 169. Messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram generated 142 reports, while social media platforms collectively accounted for 63. Traditional job boards including ZipRecruiter (57), Glassdoor (47), and Craigslist (36) registered lower absolute numbers, though without usage data for each platform, we can't determine true scam rates.

Notably, 296 respondents reported never encountering a scam—less than 20% of the sample—meaning the vast majority of job seekers have run into fraudulent opportunities somewhere in their search. The data underscores that scammers operate across virtually every channel, and job seekers should remain vigilant regardless of which platforms they use.

Job Seekers Question Legitimacy of Online Postings

Confidence in online job listings has collapsed to alarming levels, with skepticism now the dominant sentiment among those searching for work. Less than 1% of respondents completely trust that online postings represent legitimate opportunities, while the overwhelming majority harbor doubts ranging from mild to severe. The largest group, 346 job seekers, admits to trusting listings only "a little," barely edging out the 341 who feel neutral about their authenticity. Another 252 say they "mostly" trust postings, a qualified endorsement that still reflects underlying wariness. Perhaps most telling, 101 respondents have abandoned trust entirely, convinced that scams, ghost jobs, and data-harvesting schemes dominate the landscape. This erosion of confidence fundamentally alters the job search experience, forcing candidates to approach every opportunity with investigative caution rather than optimistic engagement. The crisis of trust doesn't just complicate individual searches, it undermines the entire digital recruitment ecosystem.

AI and The Job Search

44% Would Use AI to Lie on Resumes

The job market's mounting pressures have pushed nearly half of all job seekers to a startling ethical threshold. While 591 respondents maintain traditional standards of honesty, 458, representing 44%, admit they would use artificial intelligence to fabricate or exaggerate their qualifications if it meant landing an interview. This near-even split exposes a profound crisis in recruitment integrity, where the desperation to break through applicant tracking systems and compete in an oversaturated market is overwhelming long-held professional ethics. The willingness to misrepresent credentials doesn't just reflect individual moral compromises; it threatens to contaminate the entire hiring ecosystem. Honest candidates now face an impossible choice: maintain their integrity and risk being outcompeted by embellished applications, or join the fabricators in an escalating race of deception. AI technology has made dishonesty both easier to execute and perhaps easier to rationalize, a dangerous combination that transforms what was once a clear ethical boundary into a contested gray area where desperation trumps truthfulness.

Men More Willing to Fabricate Resumes with AI Than Women

A notable gender gap emerges when it comes to ethical boundaries in job searching, with men significantly more willing to use artificial intelligence to misrepresent their qualifications. Nearly half of male respondents, 48.8%, would consider using AI to exaggerate or fabricate resume details if it improved their interview prospects, compared to 39.8% of women. Conversely, 60.2% of female job seekers reject this approach entirely, maintaining ethical standards even under competitive pressure, while only 51.2% of men hold the same line. This nine-percentage-point gender divide suggests different attitudes toward risk, honesty, and desperation in the job market. Whether driven by greater comfort with technological manipulation, different levels of competitive pressure, or varying ethical frameworks, men appear more willing to compromise truthfulness when AI makes fabrication easier. The gap raises questions about how gender influences decision-making under professional stress and whether women face different consequences, real or perceived, for dishonesty that makes them more reluctant to take such risks.

Gen Z More Willing Than Millennials to Use AI to Stretch the Truth on Resumes

Attitudes toward using AI to exaggerate or misrepresent resume details vary sharply by age. Gen Z stands out as the most open to the idea, with nearly six in ten saying they would consider it if it improved their chances of landing an interview. Millennials are more divided: just under half say they would be willing, while a slim majority still draw the line at misrepresentation. Older groups are far more resistant, particularly Baby Boomers, where willingness drops to a small minority. The generational split suggests that younger job seekers may view AI-assisted embellishment as a pragmatic tactic in a competitive market, while Millennials appear more cautious about crossing ethical boundaries, even under pressure.

Seven in Ten Workers Dismiss AI Threat to Their Careers

The specter of artificial intelligence looms large in public discourse, yet most workers brush aside fears that machines will make them obsolete. A commanding 70% of respondents, 732 individuals, believe their jobs remain safe from AI replacement, expressing confidence that their roles contain essential human elements that technology cannot replicate. This majority likely relies on skills like nuanced judgment, complex problem-solving, creative thinking, or interpersonal dynamics that currently exceed AI capabilities. However, their optimism contrasts sharply with the concerns of 317 workers who see their positions as vulnerable, representing 30% who recognize their tasks as potentially automatable. This substantial minority may perform more routine, predictable work that fits neatly into algorithmic patterns, or they may simply have a more realistic, or pessimistic, view of how rapidly AI is advancing. The split reveals a workforce divided not just by opinion but by actual exposure to automation risk, where confidence correlates closely with job function. Those dismissing the threat may be right about their own roles while underestimating how profoundly AI will reshape the broader employment landscape around them.

Most Job Seekers Face AI Rejection

The human element has been systematically removed from initial hiring decisions, with a decisive majority, 64%, reporting they've been rejected by artificial intelligence before any person reviewed their qualifications. These 675 job seekers have experienced the sting of automated dismissal, often delivered within hours through impersonal emails generated by applicant tracking systems scanning for keyword matches and credential checkboxes. Only 374 respondents, representing just 36%, have navigated the job market without encountering these algorithmic gatekeepers. The prevalence of AI screening has fundamentally transformed rejection from a human judgment into a computational sorting exercise, where perfectly qualified candidates vanish into digital black holes because their resumes lack specific phrases or follow unconventional formats. This automated filtering creates a profound frustration: applicants rarely understand why they were rejected, have no opportunity to explain context or demonstrate capabilities, and face an opaque system that offers neither transparency nor appeals. The widespread experience of AI rejection reveals how thoroughly technology has colonized the hiring process, making the initial challenge not demonstrating competence to employers, but rather gaming algorithms designed to exclude rather than discover talent.

AI Reshapes Most Jobs, With Complete Transformation for 12%

Artificial intelligence has infiltrated the workplace at varying depths, with 91% of workers reporting some level of AI impact on their roles. The largest group, 443 respondents representing 42%, say AI has made parts of their work easier or faster, experiencing moderate efficiency gains without fundamental workflow changes. Another 264 workers, or 25%, report occasional AI assistance that hasn't dramatically altered their approach. At the extremes, 121 individuals, 12%, report complete transformation of how they work, their jobs fundamentally reimagined around AI capabilities. Meanwhile, only 94 respondents, just 9%, remain entirely untouched by AI tools, representing a shrinking island of pre-algorithmic work. An additional 127 workers remain uncertain about AI's impact, either because changes are too subtle to assess or because the technology's influence is still unfolding. The gradient from no impact to total transformation reveals AI adoption as a spectrum rather than a binary switch, with most workers experiencing incremental integration rather than revolutionary disruption, though for that 12% facing complete change, the revolution has already arrived.

AI Is Reshaping Work Unevenly With Tech Feeling the Biggest Shift

Across industries, AI’s influence is now the norm rather than the exception, but the depth of that change varies sharply by field. Technology roles stand out as the most transformed, with nearly six in ten workers saying AI has significantly altered how they work or made their jobs meaningfully faster. Retail and manufacturing follow, where efficiency gains outweigh outright disruption. By contrast, education and healthcare remain more cautious, with larger shares reporting only minor impact or uncertainty. Notably, “no impact at all” is a minority view in every industry, signaling that AI’s presence has already crossed from experimental to embedded, even where its long-term role is still taking shape.

AI Becomes Daily Habit for Majority as Adoption Reaches Saturation

Artificial intelligence has achieved ubiquity in professional life, with 51% of workers, 532 respondents, now using AI tools every single day. The technology has moved beyond novelty or occasional utility to become embedded in daily workflows for the majority. Another 331 workers, representing 32%, engage with AI several times weekly, bringing the regular user base to a commanding 83%. Monthly users account for 102 respondents (10%), while only 66 people rarely touch AI tools and a mere 18, less than 2%, never use them at all. This near-complete penetration marks a stunning adoption curve, transforming AI from experimental technology to workplace standard in remarkably short time. The daily users aren't necessarily working in tech roles; AI has proliferated across functions from writing and research to customer service and design. The tiny holdout population of non-users represents either highly specialized roles untouched by automation or deliberate resisters swimming against an overwhelming tide. For everyone else, AI has become as routine as email or spreadsheets, not a special tool but basic infrastructure of modern work.

Job Seekers Split on Fully Automated Hiring, Slight Majority Would Accept

The workforce stands nearly evenly divided on whether they'd accept employment from a company using exclusively AI-driven hiring, with 51% willing to proceed and 49% drawing a hard line against it. The razor-thin margin, just 21 respondents separating the 535 who'd accept from the 514 who'd refuse, reveals profound ambivalence about removing humans entirely from recruitment decisions. Those willing to accept AI-only hiring likely prioritize opportunity over process, reasoning that a job is a job regardless of how the offer arrived. They may also trust algorithmic efficiency or believe AI could be more objective than biased human gatekeepers. The near-majority refusing such offers signal deeper concerns: that fully automated hiring reveals organizational values they reject, that companies eliminating human judgment from recruitment will eliminate it elsewhere, or that working for employers who never spoke to them personally before hiring represents an unacceptable dehumanization of employment. This statistical dead heat suggests no consensus exists yet on how much automation is acceptable in hiring, workers remain torn between pragmatic acceptance and principled resistance to AI's complete colonization of human resources.

One in Seven Workers Already Displaced by AI as Automation Bites

While AI-driven job loss remains a minority experience, it has already claimed a significant number of casualties, 136 workers, representing 13% of respondents, report losing their positions to artificial intelligence or automation. The 913 who've retained their jobs despite AI's advance represent 87%, a majority that may feel safe but shouldn't feel immune. This 13% displacement rate, though concentrated among certain roles and industries, signals that technological unemployment has moved from theoretical threat to lived reality for a substantial cohort. Those displaced likely worked in functions where tasks proved readily automatable, customer service, data entry, content moderation, or routine analysis that AI now performs faster and cheaper. Their experience serves as a warning to the 87% still employed: AI displacement isn't a future possibility but a present phenomenon, expanding steadily as technology improves and companies discover more roles where algorithms can substitute for humans. The 136 who've already lost work to machines represent the leading edge of disruption that many economists predict will accelerate, making this 13% not a final toll but an early indicator of broader transformation ahead.

AI Tools Dominate Job Searches as 86% Report Using Them

Artificial intelligence has become virtually standard equipment for job seekers, with an overwhelming 86% having incorporated AI tools like ChatGPT or resume builders into their search strategies. The technology has proven effective for most users: 423 respondents, 40%, found AI tools very helpful, while another 476, representing 45%, deemed them somewhat useful. Only 92 people tried AI assistance and rejected it as unhelpful, and a mere 58 job seekers, just 6%, haven't touched these tools at all. This near-universal adoption marks a dramatic shift in how people approach employment searches, with AI assistance moving from experimental edge case to mainstream practice in remarkably short order. The 85% who found AI tools at least somewhat helpful suggests these technologies are delivering tangible value, whether drafting cover letters, optimizing resumes for applicant tracking systems, or generating interview responses. The tiny population avoiding AI entirely either lacks awareness, harbors principled objections, or works in fields where such tools offer no advantage. For everyone else, AI has become an expected component of competitive job searching, not using it may constitute a disadvantage.

Cautious Optimism Dominates as Workers Embrace AI with Reservations

The workforce has settled into a measured stance toward artificial intelligence at work, with 54%, 571 respondents, describing themselves as cautiously optimistic, recognizing AI's utility while harboring unresolved concerns. This qualified endorsement represents the dominant sentiment, edging out the 356 workers (34%) who express unambiguous excitement about AI's productivity benefits and career advantages. Together, these groups constitute 88% of workers who've accepted AI as valuable despite varying degrees of reservation. The skeptics and fearful represent much smaller minorities: 83 people rarely use AI and distrust it, while only 25 admit to discomfort rooted in replacement anxiety. A negligible 14 respondents claim AI hasn't penetrated their industries at all, a vanishingly small population suggesting few sectors remain untouched. The predominance of cautious optimism reveals a workforce neither blindly enthusiastic nor reflexively resistant, but rather pragmatically engaged with technology they recognize as both useful and potentially disruptive. This balanced ambivalence may represent the healthiest response: extracting value from AI tools while maintaining awareness of their limitations, biases, and competitive threats.

83% Prefer Human Interviewers Over AI

One-way AI interviews, where candidates record responses to algorithmic prompts without human interaction, face near-universal disdain among job seekers. An emphatic 83% of respondents, totaling 873 people, would rather speak with an actual person during the interview process. This overwhelming majority signals profound discomfort with technology that eliminates the conversational, reciprocal nature of traditional interviews. Only 40 respondents, a mere 4%, express enthusiasm for AI interviews, representing a tiny minority who may appreciate their convenience, consistency, or removal of interpersonal anxiety. Another 136 workers remain indifferent, neither embracing nor rejecting the format. The lopsided rejection suggests one-way AI interviews violate fundamental expectations about what an interview should be: a two-way dialogue where candidates assess employers as much as employers evaluate candidates. Speaking into a void, judged by algorithms analyzing facial expressions, word choice, and vocal patterns, strikes most job seekers as dehumanizing and fundamentally unfair. The 83% preferring human interaction aren't simply being traditional, they're asserting that employment decisions affecting livelihoods deserve human judgment, empathy, and the opportunity for genuine conversation.

Salary Expectations

Six-Figure Expectations Dominate as Most Target $100K-$150K Range

The largest concentration of salary expectations clusters is in the $100,000-$149,999 range, with 273 responses representing 26% of job seekers, the single most common target. This six-figure threshold has become the aspirational standard for a substantial portion of the workforce. The distribution reveals a professional-class market, with 511 respondents (49%) seeking salaries of $100,000 or above. The $75,000-$99,999 bracket captures 210 responses (20%), while 184 (18%) target $50,000-$74,999, showing significant cohorts at middle-income levels. At the lower end, 144 responses fall below $50,000, including 61 seeking under $30,000, likely early-career professionals, part-time workers, or those in lower-wage industries. High earners represent a notable minority: 149 expect $150,000-$199,999, 71 target $200,000-$300,000, and an elite 18 seek compensation exceeding $300,000. The distribution suggests a bifurcated market where half the workforce competes for six-figure positions while the other half operates below that threshold. The concentration around $100,000-$150,000 reflects both realistic market rates for experienced professionals and the psychological power of six-figure earnings as a career milestone.

Tech Job Seekers Aim Highest, While Retail and Education Set More Modest Pay Targets

Expected pay varies sharply by industry, with technology standing out for its concentration of high salary expectations. A large share of software and IT professionals say they are seeking roles paying at least $100,000, and meaningful numbers extend well beyond that range. Finance, healthcare, and engineering also show strong six-figure ambitions, though expectations are more evenly spread across the $75,000–$149,999 range. In contrast, candidates in education and retail are far more likely to target salaries below $75,000, reflecting the pay realities of those fields. The divide highlights how industry norms shape not just compensation outcomes, but what job seekers view as realistic or attainable in their next role.

Salary Expectations Rise Steeply With Seniority, While Entry-Level Candidates Keep Targets Low

Expected pay climbs sharply as careers advance. Entry-level job seekers overwhelmingly aim below $75,000, with many clustering under $50,000 as they prioritize getting a foot in the door. Mid-career professionals begin to shift into higher territory, most commonly targeting salaries between $75,000 and $149,999, reflecting growing experience and bargaining power. Senior-level candidates concentrate even more heavily in six-figure ranges, with $100,000–$149,999 emerging as the most common expectation. Executives stand apart entirely: the majority seek compensation well above $150,000, and a significant share expect $200,000 or more. The progression shows a clear link between career stage and how job seekers define fair, and competitive, pay.

Salary Expectations Hold Up Even Without a Job, While Recently Laid-Off Workers Aim Higher

Expected pay remains surprisingly resilient across employment situations. Full-time employees actively applying and passive job seekers cluster most heavily around the $75,000–$149,999 range, signaling confidence despite not needing an immediate change. Recently laid-off workers stand out for their willingness to target higher pay, with a notably larger share seeking salaries above $150,000 compared with other groups. Unemployed job seekers, meanwhile, show a wider spread: many still aim for six figures, but a meaningful portion adjust expectations downward into lower ranges, likely reflecting urgency and market pressure. Overall, employment status shapes how aggressively people price their next role, but it doesn’t erase six-figure ambitions.

Men More Likely Than Women to Target the Highest Salary Ranges

Salary expectations differ noticeably by gender, especially at the top end of the pay scale. While women and men cluster similarly in the $75,000–$149,999 range, men are more likely to aim for salaries above $150,000, including a stronger presence in the $200,000–$300,000 and over-$300,000 brackets. Women, on the other hand, are slightly more concentrated in midrange expectations between $50,000 and $99,999. Lower salary targets under $50,000 appear more frequently among men as well, suggesting a wider spread overall. Taken together, the pattern points to men setting more aggressive high-end pay goals, while women’s expectations are more tightly centered around mid-six-figure thresholds.

Gen X and Millennials Target Six-Figure Salaries, While Gen Z Sets More Modest Pay Expectations

Salary expectations vary sharply by generation, reflecting differences in experience, career stage, and market positioning. Millennials and Gen X show the strongest tilt toward six-figure compensation, with large shares aiming for roles paying between $100,000 and $149,999 and meaningful numbers pushing beyond $150,000. Gen X stands out in the upper ranges, including a notable presence in salaries above $200,000. Gen Z, by contrast, is far more concentrated in lower pay brackets, with many targeting salaries under $75,000 as they enter or early in their careers. Baby Boomers represent a smaller group overall, but skew heavily toward higher expectations, often clustering in six-figure ranges. Together, the pattern highlights how age and career progression shape what job seekers view as realistic and worthwhile compensation.

Urban Job Seekers Aim Higher on Pay, While Rural Expectations Stay More Grounded

Where people live strongly shapes how they price their next role. Those in major metropolitan areas and nearby suburbs are far more likely to target six-figure salaries, with the $100,000–$149,999 range emerging as the most common goal and sizable shares pushing well beyond that. In small towns and rural communities, expectations shift downward, with a greater concentration in the $50,000–$99,999 range and fewer candidates aiming for salaries above $150,000. Even so, rural job seekers are not exclusively modest in their goals, as a meaningful minority still seek six-figure pay. Overall, the pattern reflects how local cost of living and job markets influence what candidates view as realistic compensation.

Six-Figure Pay Remains the Goal as Job Searches Drag On

Salary expectations tend to rise the longer a job search lasts. People early in their search, especially those looking for less than a month, are more evenly split across pay ranges, with many aiming below six figures. As time stretches into several months, six-figure targets become more common, particularly in the $100,000–$149,999 range. Those searching for a year or more are also more likely to hold out for higher compensation, including $150,000 and above, suggesting a mix of experience, specialization, and a reluctance to settle after a prolonged search. At the same time, extended searches show a wider spread overall, with some candidates adjusting expectations downward while others double down on higher pay goals.