> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.b2bcentr.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Hiring Statistics 2026: Complete Data Report - URL: https://www.b2bcentr.com/hiring-statistics-2026/ - Published: 2026-08-22T11:21:26.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-22T11:21:26.000Z - Description: In this report: 2026 hiring statistics on job openings, cost per hire, time to fill, AI adoption, and salary benchmarks. - Author: Vuksan Djurcevic - Tags: Report, Stats, HiringStatistics2026 > U.S. job openings sat at 7.4 million in June 2026 while hires held at 5.3 million, a hires rate of just 3.4 percent (Source: [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm?ref=b2bcentr.com)). This report brings the numbers behind that headline into one place, tracking hiring data from primary labor market sources so talent teams can benchmark against evidence instead of sentiment. The current market is unusual because demand and dismissals are both muted at the same time, producing a low-fire, low-hire equilibrium where openings exist but movement between jobs is slow. Below you will find current data on hiring volume, layoffs, employer intentions, recruiting funnel conversion, cost per hire, time to fill, salaries, entry-level hiring, and AI adoption, with every figure linked to its source. ### Key Takeaways - U.S. job openings held at 7.4 million in June 2026; hires stayed at 5.3 million. - Median executive cost per hire reached $15,000 in 2026, up from $10,600. - Recruiters now handle 93 percent more applications than they did in 2021. - Job-changer pay grew 7.0 percent in July 2026 versus 4.4 percent for stayers. - U.S. layoff announcements fell 41 percent year to date through July 2026. ![Hiring Statistics 2026](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bf/a2/bfa2d961-d93c-47cb-a7e2-14c61a1a9461/content/images/2026/08/image-10.png) ## The 2026 Labor Market Backdrop Hiring statistics only make sense against macro conditions, and 2026 has produced a market that is stable in aggregate but weak underneath. Total nonfarm payroll employment changed little in July 2026, falling by 23,000 after an average monthly gain of just 34,000 over the prior 12 months (Source: [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm?ref=b2bcentr.com)). > Revisions told a harsher story than the headline: May was cut from a gain of 129,000 to 63,000 and June from 57,000 to 20,000, leaving the two months a combined 103,000 lower than first reported. The unemployment rate edged down to 4.1 percent, though largely because fewer people were working or looking for work, and annual average hourly earnings growth slipped to 3.2 percent, the lowest reading since May 2021 (Source: [CNBC](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/07/jobs-report-july-2026.html?ref=b2bcentr.com)). Long-term unemployment is the clearest stress signal: 1.8 million people had been jobless for 27 weeks or more in July, accounting for 25.5 percent of all unemployed workers (Source: [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf?ref=b2bcentr.com)). Private payroll data agrees. ADP recorded 44,000 private-sector jobs added in July 2026, with education and health services contributing 36,000 and leisure and hospitality shedding 11,000 (Source: [ADP](https://mediacenter.adp.com/2026-08-05-ADP-National-Employment-Report-Private-Sector-Employment-Increased-by-44,000-Jobs-in-July-Annual-Pay-was-Up-4-4?ref=b2bcentr.com)). --- ## Job Openings, Hires, Quits, and Layoffs: The Core Hiring Statistics The JOLTS report is the single best gauge of hiring activity, and its June 2026 readings show a market frozen near multi-year lows. | Metric | June 2026 level | Rate | | ---------------------- | --------------- | ---- | | Job openings | 7.4 million | 4.4% | | Hires | 5.3 million | 3.4% | | Total separations | 5.4 million | 3.4% | | Quits | 3.2 million | 2.0% | | Layoffs and discharges | 1.8 million | 1.1% | | Other separations | 353,000 | n/a | All figures above are from the June 2026 release (Source: [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm?ref=b2bcentr.com)). Two numbers matter most: - A 2.0 percent quits rate means voluntary movement is well below the 3.0 percent peaks of the 2021 and 2022 hiring boom, so employers are backfilling fewer seats. - A 1.1 percent layoff rate means the churn is not coming from involuntary exits either. Openings did rise in transportation, warehousing, and utilities by 97,000 and in federal government by 39,000, while wholesale trade lost 74,000 openings and nondurable goods manufacturing lost 55,000. --- ## Layoff and Job Cut Statistics Announced job cuts have cooled sharply. > U.S. employers announced 33,429 cuts in July 2026, the lowest monthly total in two years, bringing the year-to-date total to 477,033, a 41 percent drop from the 806,383 announced in the first seven months of 2025 (Source: [Challenger, Gray & Christmas](https://www.challengergray.com/blog/challenger-report-layoffs-fall-hiring-picks-up-ai-leads-for-fifth-straight-month/?ref=b2bcentr.com)). Where cuts do happen, they concentrate: - **Technology:** 149,023 cuts year to date, up 67 percent year over year and 31 percent of all announced cuts. - **Transportation:** 41,748 cuts year to date, up 303 percent from 10,353 in the same period of 2025. - **Health care:** 34,426 cuts year to date, up 6 percent. - **Media:** 4,428 cuts year to date, down 55 percent. Artificial intelligence was the leading stated reason for reductions for the fifth consecutive month, at 10,970 cuts in July. Announced hiring plans reached 16,095 for the month, and hiring announcements are running 25 percent ahead of last year, concentrated in aerospace, energy, and manufacturing (Source: [Challenger, Gray & Christmas](https://www.challengergray.com/blog/challenger-report-layoffs-fall-hiring-picks-up-ai-leads-for-fifth-straight-month/?ref=b2bcentr.com)). ![Hiring Statistics 2026](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bf/a2/bfa2d961-d93c-47cb-a7e2-14c61a1a9461/content/images/2026/08/image-11.png) ## Employer Hiring Intentions Forward-looking survey data confirms caution rather than contraction. The global Net Employment Outlook for Q3 2026 came in at 26 percent, down five points quarter over quarter but up two points year over year, based on interviews with more than 40,500 employers across 42 countries (Source: [ManpowerGroup](https://www.manpowergroup.com/en/insights/report/q3-2026-manpowergroup-employment-outlook-survey?ref=b2bcentr.com)). Breaking the intentions down: - 42 percent of employers plan to increase staff - 40 percent expect no change - 16 percent foresee cuts. Outlooks weakened in 33 of 42 countries surveyed. Mid-size organizations with 250 to 999 employees are the most confident group globally at 32 percent, with the largest year-over-year gain at six points (Source: [PR Newswire](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-hiring-outlook-holds-steady-in-q3-with-mid-size-employers-showing-most-optimism-302794696.html?ref=b2bcentr.com)). --- ## Recruiting Funnel Statistics: Volume Is Up, Conversion Is Down > The most dramatic shift in hiring statistics is not demand, it is application volume. Analysis of more than 165 million applications and 1.2 million hires found recruiters are handling 93 percent more applications than in 2021, while managing an average of 13.4 open requisitions each (Source: [Gem](https://www.gem.com/blog/key-takeaways-from-the-2026-recruiting-benchmarks-report?ref=b2bcentr.com)). Aggregate hiring rose 8.3 percent year over year, the first sustained rebound since the 2021 peak, but conversion has tightened at every stage. At large organizations, fewer than 10 percent of applicants reach the pre-onsite stage, yet their later-stage conversion is stronger, producing a full-funnel hire rate of 0.7 percent versus 0.3 percent at startups (Source: [Gem](https://www.gem.com/blog/key-takeaways-from-the-2026-recruiting-benchmarks-report?ref=b2bcentr.com)). The practical translation: a role attracting 1,000 applications converts somewhere between three and seven hires-worth of qualified pipeline, and most of the recruiter hours are spent on the 993 who will not be hired. --- ## Time to Fill and Cost Per Hire Benchmarks Cost per hire has climbed even as the market has softened, because screening volume rose faster than team capacity. Median cost per hire for executive positions reached $15,000 in 2026, a considerable increase from $10,600 in 2025, $8,800 in 2022, and $5,000 in 2017 (Source: [SHRM](https://www.shrm.org/mena/topics-tools/research/recruiting-benchmarking/full-data-brief?ref=b2bcentr.com)). The same benchmarking work puts median cost per hire for non-executive roles at $1,300 (Source: [Truffle](https://www.hiretruffle.com/blog/cost-per-hire?ref=b2bcentr.com)). Direct spend is only part of the cost. Industry-level averages that include tooling, interviewer time, and agency fees show a wide spread around a roughly $4,800 national figure: | Industry | Average cost per hire | | ---------- | --------------------- | | Technology | $6,200 | | Finance | $5,900 | | Healthcare | $4,700 | | Retail | $2,700 | Those benchmarks are drawn from SHRM and BLS inputs (Source: [InterviewCost](https://interviewcost.com/by-industry?ref=b2bcentr.com)). On speed, median time to fill dropped from 67.7 days in 2025 to 63.5 days in 2026 among tracked companies, still far above pre-2021 norms (Source: [Pin](https://www.pin.com/blog/cost-per-hire-benchmarks/?ref=b2bcentr.com)). Vacancy cost is the number most teams omit: at a median 44-day time to fill, lost productivity alone can exceed $22,000 per role, and a bad hire costs up to 30 percent of first-year earnings (Source: [Pin](https://www.pin.com/blog/cost-per-hire-benchmarks/?ref=b2bcentr.com)). --- ## Salary and Pay Growth Statistics for New Hires Pay is where the frozen market shows its one clear crack. Job-stayer pay grew 4.4 percent year over year in July 2026, while job-changer pay accelerated to 7.0 percent, the largest annual increase since August 2025 (Source: [ADP](https://mediacenter.adp.com/2026-08-05-ADP-National-Employment-Report-Private-Sector-Employment-Increased-by-44,000-Jobs-in-July-Annual-Pay-was-Up-4-4?ref=b2bcentr.com)). Median annual pay for job-stayers stood at $62,100, with industry-level stayer gains ranging from 4.0 percent to 5.2 percent and firm-size gains ranging from 2.4 percent at the smallest employers to 4.8 percent at large ones (Source: [StockTitan](https://www.stocktitan.net/news/ADP/adp-national-employment-report-private-sector-employment-increased-c8jvqnaycivv.html?ref=b2bcentr.com)). A roughly 2.6 percentage point premium for changing jobs, against a backdrop of near-record-low quits, means the workers who do move are being paid well for scarce skills. Advertised wage growth tells the opposite story for the broad market, slowing to around 2.5 percent annually and running below inflation (Source: [Indeed](https://www.indeed.com/news/releases/hiringlab-2026-jobs-hiring-trends-report?ref=b2bcentr.com)). ![Hiring Statistics 2026](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bf/a2/bfa2d961-d93c-47cb-a7e2-14c61a1a9461/content/images/2026/08/image-12.png) ## Entry-Level and Graduate Hiring Statistics Early-career hiring improved during 2026 after two weak years. Employers now expect to increase new college graduate hiring from the Class of 2026 by 5.6 percent, revised upward from an essentially flat projection in the fall, driven by more than one-third of respondents planning additional hires (Source: [NACE](https://www.naceweb.org/about-us/press/2026/outlook-brightens-for-college-class-of-2026-entry-level-hiring?ref=b2bcentr.com)). Starting salaries are rising faster than headcount: - Computer sciences bachelor's graduates: $81,535 average, up 6.9 percent, the top-paid category. - Engineering majors: up 3.1 percent. - Social sciences: down 1.7 percent, the only declining category. - Computer sciences master's graduates: $94,212 projected average. These projections come from the Winter 2026 Salary Survey (Source: [NACE](https://www.naceweb.org/about-us/press/2026/salaries-expected-to-climb-for-class-of-2026-grads-despite-flat-hiring?ref=b2bcentr.com)). Internships remain the main pipeline. Employers expect 3.9 percent more interns in 2025-26, and 70 percent now report using skills-based hiring, up from 65 percent the prior year (Source: [NACE](https://www.naceweb.org/job-market/trends-and-predictions/?ref=b2bcentr.com)). Among HR professionals, 77 percent found internships somewhat or very effective at addressing talent shortages (Source: [SHRM](https://www.shrm.org/mena/topics-tools/research/recruiting-benchmarking/full-data-brief?ref=b2bcentr.com)). --- ## AI Adoption Statistics in Hiring AI now shapes both sides of the hiring transaction. > Roughly 69 percent of companies use AI somewhere in talent acquisition, but only 18 percent report using it broadly across hiring processes, and 46 percent are using or planning agentic AI for talent acquisition specifically (Source: [Pin](https://www.pin.com/blog/ai-adoption-recruiting-report/?ref=b2bcentr.com)). Adoption is heavily concentrated. Almost 90 percent of all AI-related job postings came from just 1 percent of companies, meaning AI hiring demand sits with a small set of very large employers (Source: [Pin](https://www.pin.com/blog/ai-adoption-recruiting-report/?ref=b2bcentr.com)). Trust has not kept pace with deployment. Only 26 percent of applicants trust AI to evaluate them fairly, while 75 percent of surveyed companies allow AI to reject candidates without human review (Source: [EmployerBranding.news](https://employerbranding.news/resources/ai-in-hiring-statistics-2026-adoption-bias-trust-and-regulation/?ref=b2bcentr.com)). On the demand side, the share of job postings mentioning AI terms rose 3.1 percentage points year over year through July 31, 2026 (Source: [Indeed Hiring Lab](https://data.indeed.com/?ref=b2bcentr.com)). --- ## Job Posting Statistics: Flexibility and Pay Transparency Posting attributes are a leading indicator of hiring competitiveness. Through July 31, 2026, the share of U.S. postings mentioning remote or hybrid terms was up 0.4 percentage points year over year, and the share with explicit pay information rose 0.9 percentage points (Source: [Indeed Hiring Lab](https://data.indeed.com/?ref=b2bcentr.com)). The pattern holds internationally. In the UK, 16.9 percent of postings mentioned remote or hybrid arrangements as of end-June 2026, close to peak levels despite return-to-office pressure, and 2.5 percent of all searches contained remote or hybrid keywords (Source: [Indeed Hiring Lab UK](https://hiringlab.indeed.com/uk/blog/2026/08/03/mid-year-uk-jobs-hiring-trends-report/?ref=b2bcentr.com)). Overall posting volume is the constraint. The U.S. Job Postings Index began 2026 more than 10 percent above pre-pandemic norms before sliding to barely above those norms (Source: [Indeed](https://www.indeed.com/news/releases/hiringlab-2026-jobs-hiring-trends-report?ref=b2bcentr.com)). ![Hiring Statistics 2026](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bf/a2/bfa2d961-d93c-47cb-a7e2-14c61a1a9461/content/images/2026/08/image-13.png) ## Benchmarks Worth Tracking Against For teams building a 2026 hiring scorecard, these are the reference points the data above supports: | Metric | 2026 benchmark | | ------------------------------------ | --------------------- | | Hires rate (national) | 3.4% | | Quits rate (national) | 2.0% | | Median time to fill | 63.5 days | | Cost per hire, non-executive | $1,300 median | | Cost per hire, executive | $15,000 median | | Requisitions per recruiter | 13.4 | | Full-funnel application-to-hire rate | 0.3% to 0.7% | | Job-changer pay premium | 2.6 percentage points | ## What the Data Signals for the Rest of 2026 Three signals stand out: - First: Hiring is stable rather than recovering: openings, hires, quits, and layoffs have all been roughly flat for two years, which means competitive advantage comes from process quality, not market timing. - Second: Cost pressure is internal, not external. Cost per hire is rising while the market softens because application volume grew 93 percent while teams shrank, so the fix is triage capacity rather than more sourcing spend. - Third: The pay data shows scarcity has not disappeared, it has narrowed. A 7.0 percent job-changer premium alongside a 2.0 percent quits rate means the small number of people willing to move hold real leverage. ![Hiring Statistics 2026](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bf/a2/bfa2d961-d93c-47cb-a7e2-14c61a1a9461/content/images/2026/08/image-14.png) ## Conclusion This report exists to make hiring decisions defensible with current, source-linked data rather than recycled statistics from a different labor market. The 2026 picture is a plateau: 7.4 million openings against a 3.4 percent hires rate, layoffs down 41 percent year to date, employer outlooks positive but softening, and application volume rising far faster than recruiting capacity. Costs are climbing on both ends, with executive cost per hire at $15,000 and time to fill still above 60 days, while job-changers capture a 7.0 percent pay premium that job-stayers do not. Teams that measure their funnel against these benchmarks, rather than against 2021 memory, will make better calls on headcount, budget, and offer strategy. ***Read Next*** - [Remote Work Tech Costs](https://www.b2bcentr.com/remote-work-tech-costs/) - [2026 Email Open Rate Report](https://www.b2bcentr.com/email-open-rate-2026/) - [2026 B2B Landing Page Conversion Report](https://www.b2bcentr.com/landing-page-conversion-rate-2026/) ## FAQs ### **1\. What are the most important hiring statistics in 2026?** The most important hiring statistics in 2026 are 7.4 million job openings, a 3.4 percent hires rate, a 2.0 percent quits rate, and a 1.1 percent layoff rate, all reported for June 2026 (Source: [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm?ref=b2bcentr.com)). Together they describe a labor market with steady demand and very low worker movement. ### **2\. What is the average cost per hire in 2026?** The average cost per hire in 2026 is approximately $1,300 median for non-executive roles and $15,000 median for executive roles, with industry averages ranging from $2,700 in retail to $6,200 in technology (Source: [SHRM](https://www.shrm.org/mena/topics-tools/research/recruiting-benchmarking/full-data-brief?ref=b2bcentr.com)). ### **3\. How long does it take to fill a job in 2026?** It takes a median of 63.5 days to fill a job in 2026, down from 67.7 days in 2025 but still well above pre-2021 levels, with vacancy costs on a typical role exceeding $22,000 (Source: [Pin](https://www.pin.com/blog/cost-per-hire-benchmarks/?ref=b2bcentr.com)). ### **4\. How many applications does a recruiter handle in 2026?** A recruiter handles 93 percent more applications in 2026 than in 2021 while managing an average of 13.4 open requisitions, with full-funnel application-to-hire rates falling between 0.3 percent and 0.7 percent (Source: [Gem](https://www.gem.com/blog/key-takeaways-from-the-2026-recruiting-benchmarks-report?ref=b2bcentr.com)). ### **5\. How many companies use AI in hiring in 2026?** About 69 percent of companies use AI somewhere in talent acquisition in 2026, though only 18 percent apply it broadly across hiring processes and 46 percent are using or planning agentic AI (Source: [Pin](https://www.pin.com/blog/ai-adoption-recruiting-report/?ref=b2bcentr.com)). --- **Disclaimer:** This content is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or compliance advice. Protocol versions, governance arrangements, and partner counts cited here reflect publicly announced milestones as of August 2026 and are moving quickly. Adoption figures come from vendor and foundation announcements with differing methodologies and should be treated as directional signals rather than guaranteed outcomes.