#hiring-trends

#hiring-trends

AI inspired many employers to take a wait-and-see approach to hiring in 2025, but new data suggest they'll be returning to the market in search of certain skills in 2026. According to Upwork's In-Demand Skills 2026 report, demand for AI-specific proficiencies have more than doubled on the freelancer platform over the last year. But at the same time, nearly half of employers also say they're also putting a premium on human skills, like creativity, emotional intelligence, resilience and innovation.

LinkedIn announced a new partnership on Wednesday allowing users to official certifications in AI skills, drawing on usage data from prominent AI apps. The integration includes the video and podcast editor Descript, coding apps Lovable and Replit, and AI agent building platform Relay.app. These platforms will use AI to assess your skills as you use them, and generate a certificate based on your usage patterns, product outcomes, and proficiency within the tools.

As companies race to scale revenue operations efficiently, a new role is emerging at the intersection of technology and business strategy: the GTM (go-to-market) engineer. According to ZoomInfo data, hiring for the role has doubled year over year for the last two years, with hiring peaks in January and July. In mid-2025 LinkedIn had over 1,400 postings for GTM engineering roles, with over 3,000 listed in January of 2026

Bitvocation is a jobs board and resources platform for the Bitcoin job market. They offer a highly curated feed of job offers, as well as career tips, specializing in network-driven hiring. They look to help Bitcoin startups as well as larger companies in the industry. According to a press release shared with Bitcoin Magazine, Bitvocation is not a recruitment agency. "We don't headhunt. We are building a "strategic Bitcoiners reserve" to make hiring more efficient and help startups find the right talent faster."

companies reduce staff through automating routine work while still struggling to hire AI specialists, despite a surge in client demand for AI. "Top five Indian IT firms added only 17 net employees in the first nine months of FY26 versus 17,764 in the same period last year," said Chirag Mehta, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research. "That is what AI-era productivity looks like in practice: more output per employee, fewer benches, and tighter utilization."

If the job market feels harder than it should right now, you're not imagining it. Recent analysis from LinkedIn shows that while more than half of professionals (56%) plan to job hunt in 2026, but 76% don't feel prepared. Hiring hasn't stopped, but it has slowed, narrowed, and become more selective. When fewer open roles, higher expectations, and longer decision cycles are now the norm, broad job searches are not the answer, but focusing on targeted job searches.

LinkedIn's latest research shows that while 72% of professionals plan to look for a new job this year, 84% feel unprepared as AI rapidly reshapes hiring and career growth. To bring clarity amid this uncertainty, LinkedIn's annual Jobs on the Rise list highlights the fastest-growing roles over the past three years. The data reveals strong demand for both technical and leadership AI roles, such as AI engineers and AI managers,

Demand for software development skills in AI-related roles is set to fall next year as agentic AI accelerates across business markets, according to an IEEE industry survey. Or so says research by the global technical professional organization, which polled 400 CIOs, CTOs and IT directors in Brazil, China, Japan, India, the UK, and the US. IEEE states that nearly all professionals expect agentic AI innovation to continue at "lightning speed" in 2026, as both established enterprises and startups deepen investments and commitments to the technology.

Here at Tech.co, we've kept an eye on the number of fully remote positions open at Microsoft over the past few years, and a trend has become clear. In August 2024, 883 fully remote jobs were available. By November, this had fallen to 400-something postions, a trend that continued in December, when we spotted 417 remote positions open. In February 2025, just 313 work-from-home jobs were open.

Anton Osika, the 35-year-old CEO of the vibe coding platform Lovable AI, told Business Insider last week that a standard computer science degree "isn't useless" or "worthless" but its value has changed, and "the leverage has moved." Osika said that AI removes the need for "technical know-how" and "years of training" because people now have the tools to turn ideas into working products, "without ever touching a formal CS [computer science] education," by vibe coding - using AI tech that does the work for you.

In the first half of 2025, there were only nine partner moves for New York private equity partners—less than 50% of the 2024 total, indicating cautious hiring.

"Hire a bunch of these people," he said in a Monday interview on the a16z podcast, "because they're going to flip your company on its head in terms of how much faster the organization can run."

By the time Gen Alpha enters the job market, traditional methods of applying will likely be replaced with personality tests as a more effective hiring tool.

"In an era where the outlook on the jobs market is fuzzy or uncertain, it makes sense for both employers and employees to stick with what they know," Nela Richardson, ADP's chief economist, said.

Salesforce's Chief Financial and Operations Officer, Robin Washington, noted that internal AI implementation has reduced hiring needs, allowing the company to save $50 million by redeploying staff.

Employers are planning to increase hiring by 7.3% for the class of 2025, signaling an optimistic job market compared to previous years.