Feeling the hiring heat? Our Spring Hiring Trends Update shows how to stay cool in a tough jobs market

The pressure is on across the UK jobs market. You feel it, we feel it – and the data backs it up. Payrolled employment is falling, hiring budgets are being squeezed and, since our fieldwork closed, an oil price shock has added further strain.

So this edition of our Hiring Trends Update couldn’t come at a more timely moment.

We surveyed nearly 900 UK employers and 2,000 workers this spring to find out how the market is recalibrating – and what we found was a hiring landscape remarkably quick to adapt. More focused, more selective and increasingly honed on specialist and future-critical roles.

Skills fit remains the number one challenge keeping recruiters up at night. But the strategic decisions and trade-offs being made under that pressure reveal where adaptation is taking root – and where recruitment could be edging next. Let’s take a look.

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The backdrop: A pressure-cooker of factors

First, the macro picture: because 2026 has been far from a ‘normal’ hiring environment.

What does this mean practically?

Budgets are strained, security is front of mind, and recruiters and jobseekers alike are doing more with less. Hiring hasn’t stopped, but it has reallocated. Our data shows where.

The labour market hasn’t contracted, but it has concentrated, particularly in specialist and future-focused roles. Organisations are hiring and restructuring at the same time: this is reallocation, not recovery. The most encouraging signal is this: workforce planning is now employers’ top priority. TA teams are not just firefighting, they are thinking ahead.

Julius Probst, Senior Economist, The Stepstone Group

The pressure is landing: where hiring is getting tougher

Gone are the days post-pandemic when the main challenge for recruiters was finding enough candidates. Now the challenge now is finding the right fit, at a cost that makes commercial sense.

AI is changing the dynamic on both sides of the hiring equation. For jobseekers, it’s lowered barriers to applying, making the market more accessible than ever.
For recruiters, that means higher volumes to assess and processes under more pressure than they were designed for.

More applicants, slower decisions

More applications have added drag. The average time to hire has climbed to 12 weeks, up from 10 weeks in our Autumn 2025 edition. Higher volumes mean more sifting and more decisions, with many hiring funnels simply not set up to move quickly under that load.

For candidates, this friction is felt acutely:

Comparing these findings to our Hiring Efficiency Survey from last year tells the same story: applications submitted are up 16% and interviews required to land a single role are up 18%.

It’s a grind for jobseekers. But there’s an opportunity here for employers, because right now, process is employer brand. How you treat candidates shapes how they talk about you, hired or not.

Skills fit and salary: the two blockers that really matter

Skills mismatch remains the number one challenge for employers, cited by 32%, holding the top spot for the second consecutive edition. With specialist recruitment now the #1 hiring priority, the pressure on matching skills precisely has sharpened considerably.

Close behind is salary expectations, now the #2 barrier for 23% of employers, up from fifth position in our last edition. Affordability has become a material constraint. The National Living Wage increase has already forced 52% of employers to cut Q2/Q3 headcount plans, and 46% to reduce entry-level roles specifically. The financial picture of hiring has genuinely shifted.

Organisations filling roles fastest aren’t casting the widest net – they’re being precise about what a role genuinely needs, not what would be ideal. A sharper brief is one of the most effective tools available right now.

Keeping cool: how organisations are adapting

What stands out across this edition is that talent acquisition teams aren’t simply fire-fighting in a tough market. They’re taking steps to change how their organisations think about hiring, skills, and the future of work.

Talent teams are stretched but more strategic than ever

Four in five (83%) say talent acquisition has become more strategic over the past year. Over two-thirds (68%) now carry broader HR and business responsibilities. Over half (55%) say their workload is harder to m\anage than before.

Pressure and influence are rising together, and for those leading TA teams, now is the moment to formalise that seat at the table.were: 

Where hiring budgets are really going

Broad hiring expansion has given way to targeted capability-building. Investment is concentrated in areas where skills scarcity is most acute:

• AI & Machine Learning – 34% of employers actively recruiting here
• Tech & Engineering – 32%
• Data & Analytics – 29%
• Cybersecurity – 29%

These aren’t just the hottest job categories right now. They’re a signal of where organisations are placing their bets on the future, and where the competition for talent is only going to intensify.

Recruiters are anxious about AI (but already using it)

Given the pace of change, it’s understandable why two in five (42%) recruiters worry about AI’s impact on their own roles.

But they’re not letting that anxiety stand in their way: 81% are already using automation and AI tools, and 36% say these tools are the top reason hiring feels easier than a year ago.
The real divide is between those building AI literacy now and those waiting to see how things play out.

The talent pool is bigger than ever – but it’s not a free-for-all

84% of UK workers say they’re open to a new opportunity – the highest we’ve ever recorded in a Hiring Trends Update.

Most of that pool is passively open, meaning not actively applying, but willing to move for the right offer. That proportion has grown from 60% to 66% since our last edition, while active jobseekers hold steady at 18% and those not open at all have dropped from 21% to 16%.

We clearly see this isn’t a ‘push’ market. Candidates aren’t running from bad jobs, but observing, preparing and waiting for something worth moving for.
Which means your offer has to work harder.

All four candidate priorities are rising – not just salary

What are candidates looking for to make the leap? Every key driver of job choice has intensified since our Autumn 2025 edition:

• Salary: up from 54% to 57%
• Work-life balance: up from 38% to 43%
• Job security: up from 28% to 31%
• Flexible working: up from 25% to 28%

The most telling shift is that four in five workers now say job security matters more to them than career progression. In a climate of geopolitical uncertainty, AI anxiety and cost-of-living pressure, stability has become the new ambition.

This means salary alone won’t woo a hire. The strongest offers speak to all four dimensions (and if your job ad doesn’t address security and stability, you’re already giving candidates a reason to say not.

Tip: Salary alone won’t win over candidates weighing up security, balance and flexibility. Do your job offers speak to all four areas?

FOBO: The fear that’s driving career action, not paralysis

That need for job security hasn’t arisen in isolation. This edition, we took a deeper look at what’s behind it and found a sentiment that’s hard to ignore across the workforce. We’re calling it FOBO: the Fear of Becoming Obsolete.

Two in five workers (42%) have FOBO or the worry that AI and automation could make their role redundant.

What’s striking though is that even the most hesitant workers aren’t sitting still. They’re rolling their sleeves up:

• 37% of workers have already learned to use AI tools in the past year
• 87% are confident their skills will stay relevant for at least three more years
• 86% say they’d move industries entirely if their sector became less viable
• 71% want their employer to invest more in reskilling.We’re calling it FOBO: the Fear of Becoming Obsolete.

The talent pool is wider and more adaptive than most employers assume. Candidates are thinking laterally about their futures and preparing to make the move. And with 71% saying they’d feel more secure if their employer invested more in their development, that’s both a clear expectation and a critical retention lever

Where confidence is building and who’s pulling ahead

The market isn’t moving evenly. Some sectors are showing genuine momentum, and the gap between organisations actively investing in their hiring approach and those standing still is widening fast.

Sectors leading the charge

IT & Telecoms and Manufacturing are out front on both hiring intent and confidence. Among employers planning to increase hiring over the next six months:

• IT & Telecoms: 68% – confidence 7.9/10 (highest of any sector)
• Manufacturing: 64% – confidence 7.0/10
• Finance & Accounting: 55% | Construction: 53% | Professional Services: 52%
• Hospitality & Leisure: 34% – confidence 5.8/10

The performance gap is widening

Interestingly, the data draws a sharp between organisations actively investing in hiring strategy and those taking more passive approach.

Workforce planning has also emerged as a top-two strategic priority, with 29% of HR leaders ranking it highly – a jump from from previous editions. This is TA stepping into the long game: building capability pipelines, forecasting skills gaps, aligning hiring with where the business needs to be in 12 months, not just filling today’s vacancies.

Five actions to take now

We want this research to move things, not just inform. Five actions that come directly from the data:

How to move these insights into action

1. Sharpen your brief: Skills fit remains the #1 barrier. Be clear about what the role genuinely needs, not what would be ideal. Organisations filling roles fastest know exactly what they’re hiring for.
2. Lead with stability. Salary, security, flexibility and work-life balance are all rising priorities. The strongest offers speak to all four. If your job ad doesn’t address security, revise it before it goes live.
3. Fix your process. Two in three candidates don’t hear back. Respond quickly – a faster, clearer process is a competitive advantage right now and costs very little to implement.
4. Cast the net wider. 86% of workers say they’d move industries if needed. Career changers and adjacent-sector candidates are ready. Open your talent pool to them.
5. Act now, not later. Hiring is being reallocated, not lost. Build your pipeline now. Given the macro picture since our fieldwork closed, the window for smart preparation may be shorter than it looks.

About the research

The Hiring Trends Update is Totaljobs’ bi-annual pulse of the UK recruitment market. Our data comes from two surveys run in March-April 2026: 885 UK employers and HR decision-makers, plus 2,017 UK workers representative of the UK workforce by age and gender.

Findings are compared against our Autumn 2025 edition (B2B n=1,098, B2C n=1,984) and our Hiring Efficiency survey, June-July 2025 (n=2,025 candidates, n=748 recruiters) both also representative of the British workforce by age and gender.

Market context: ONS Labour Market Overview, May 2026; OECD Economic Outlook, March 2026; Bank of England MPC Summary, March 2026.

It’s tough out there – the right hiring partner makes a difference

Hiring is tougher than it’s been in years, but the right partner makes a difference. Employers using Totaljobs are more than twice as likely to say hiring has got easier over the past six months, and report significantly higher hiring confidence than those who don’t.

Part of The Stepstone Group, we combine local market expertise with global recruitment technology to help you reach wider talent pools, strengthen your employer brand and get more from your hiring budget.

Let’s talk about what’s possible.