Nearly half of job candidates accepted their most recent offer in the fourth quarter of 2025, down sharply from 85% two years earlier. A December 2025 Gartner survey of 3,072 employees found that 30% said they would stay in their current job due to economic volatility even if offered something better.
Highly skilled employees are 39% more likely than less-skilled peers to stay put.
A separate Gartner survey of 11,838 employees conducted in the first quarter of 2026 found intent to stay down 19% over the past two years, a sign that pent-up attrition could follow when market confidence returns.
While hiring is down overall, organizations are still hiring for a smaller set of roles that are critical and much harder to fill. At the same time, candidates are more reluctant to switch jobs right now. CHROs need to build higher-touch candidate engagement strategies for critical roles, with a clear narrative on why changing jobs is worth the risk.”
Only 30% of candidates said they were open to AI-led interviews, and just 31% were informed in advance that they would be participating in one.
Candidates are increasingly evaluating roles based on whether they offer AI skill development opportunities.
Read more via Gartner
Since 2023, the share of prime working-age mothers in the labor force has consistently exceeded pre-pandemic levels, and researchers say workplace flexibility is a significant driver. The effect is strongest among mothers of children under five, who are historically least likely to work.
Forty-five percent of mothers are their family's primary earners, giving them little option to step back even as child care costs rise.
Twenty-six percent of parents still work remotely some days of the week.
Some women interviewed by The New York Times said flexible work made having children possible at all; others said it kept them from leaving the workforce entirely.
Researchers say the pandemic demonstrated that changing how work is structured, not just individual effort, drives participation, and that similar changes could benefit hourly and in-person workers if applied more broadly.
Read more via The New York Times
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations for pregnancy, childbirth, and related conditions, but many workplace systems weren't built for it. A Fast Company Executive Board piece by HR consultant Rachel Shaw argues the law is exposing a broader gap between executive expectations and how work actually gets done.
The PWFA covers accommodations such as modified duties, reduced lifting, scheduling flexibility, telework, and temporary reassignment.
Employers that default to leave eligibility rules instead of an individualized accommodation analysis risk both operational and legal exposure.
The FMLA gives eligible employees the right to step away from work; the PWFA addresses the right to stay at work with adjustments, and the two laws can work in tandem.
Managers who make assumptions about a pregnant employee's capacity or interest in advancement, even well-intentioned ones, risk losing talent and creating legal liability.
Shaw recommends treating return from maternity leave as a structured transition, with clear communication before leave begins and an explicit re-entry plan covering workload, expectations, and career trajectory.
Read more via Fast Company
As healthcare costs keep climbing, some employers are trimming benefits to offset expenses, but a Mercer consultant warns the savings are often smaller than they appear. About three in four U.S. finance leaders identified healthcare costs as a top-five operating expense concern in an April Mercer report, and 38% said they had cut spending on other benefits over the past two years as a result.
Reducing paid parental leave from 20 weeks to 15 weeks does not cut costs by 25%, because not every employee takes the full amount.
Savings also vary by industry and state, since many states mandate paid family leave, meaning employers aren't bearing the full cost to begin with.
Unlimited PTO is one area where Mercer sees legitimate savings potential, since the main losers are departing employees with accrued time.
Is it worth the bad blowback we're going to get from our employees if we're only going to save such a nominal amount?"
Read more via HR Dive
Employers and employees in frontline-heavy industries agree that workforce training is falling short, but they disagree on why. A June Chegg report based on surveys of 1,000 employers and 1,005 employees across industries including IT, finance, retail, and manufacturing found the disconnect runs deep.
Employers cited lack of practical skills as the biggest training gap; employees cited lack of training in skills that lead to advancement or higher responsibility.
While employers flagged AI and automation (36%) and digital and IT capabilities (24%) as the top skills employees lack, workers pointed to leadership and people management (25%) and communication and teamwork (24%).
More than half of employers said entry-level workers aren't prepared for the job, yet 77% said their training programs are effective; only 58% of employees agreed.
Nearly one-third of employers said they spend the equivalent of a full workday making up for skills shortfalls.
Almost three-quarters of employees said their training had not led to any change in pay or position.
Structured return-to-work programs for professionals re-entering the workforce after career breaks surged after the pandemic, but listings have since collapsed. Returnship postings on CV-Library, the UK's largest independent job site, peaked at 1,784 in 2022 and have reached only 226 so far this year.
The Bank of England's career returner program, which once welcomed up to 20 participants annually, is paused and will not accept applications this year.
KPMG has frozen its program while it assesses requirements; Starling discontinued a returners partnership in favor of a coding retraining scheme.
More than 55% of UK recruiters prioritize recent experience, leaving career-break candidates with few structured routes back to work.
A Work AI Institute study found that professionals with longer experience are better positioned to apply knowledge to AI tools and catch AI-generated errors; 93% of surveyed returners said they were keen to retrain in AI.
There are currently 474,000 Britons in long-term unemployment, the highest since January 2016.
Read more via Financial Times
Fourteen states and Washington, D.C. now require employers to post salary ranges in job listings, with Connecticut, Maine, and Virginia set to join them by the end of 2026. But legal requirements are only part of the shift.
Fifty-three percent of job listings on ZipRecruiter now include salary information.
Fifty-seven percent of organizations say they publish salary ranges in job postings, up from 45% in 2023, according to Payscale's 2026 Compensation Best Practices Report.
Seventy-six percent of employers believe including salary information helps them find higher-quality applicants, per ZipRecruiter.
Nearly half of job seekers (46.7%) said they would feel more seen by employers if job descriptions were more detailed.
Forty-nine percent of job seekers expect to hear back within three days of applying, and 67.9% want prompt responses throughout the process even when the answer is no.
Read more via Money
A growing share of job seekers are applying to roles en masse without reading the full listing, a behavior Monster has dubbed "doomjobbing." One-third of candidates spend less than a minute reviewing a job posting before applying, according to new Monster research.
Over 40% of job seekers apply to four or more jobs per search session.
Sixteen percent spend less than 30 seconds reviewing a posting; another 16% spend between 30 seconds and one minute.
Nearly half of candidates admit they apply without reading the full job description.
Twenty-one percent said their strategy is simply to apply to as many roles as possible.
The result: higher application volumes, less relevant submissions, slower hiring, and candidates who feel ignored.
When candidates don't hear back, they often respond by applying to more roles, more quickly and with less scrutiny. It creates a cycle where quantity increases but meaningful matches don't."
Read more via HR Executive
New research from Cangrade examined soft skill levels among younger workers against the skills most commonly required in AI-related job postings. The findings show a clear split.
An analysis of 200 AI-related job postings found five soft skills appearing most consistently: strategic and conceptual thinking, critical thinking, communication, attention to detail, and creative problem-solving.
Eighty-three percent of AI job postings required at least three of those five skills.
Across nearly 72,000 workforce assessments, Gen Z and millennial candidates scored 14% above average on communication but 18% below average on critical thinking, 17% below on attention to detail, and 10% below on creative problem-solving.
Strategic thinking landed near average at -1%.
AI makes execution easier, but it increases the premium on judgment. If organizations assume AI will compensate for reasoning gaps, they risk scaling errors instead of performance."
Read more via Globe Newswire
About one-third of 16- to 19-year-olds in the U.S. were employed last summer, down from a peak of about 60% in the late 1970s, and this summer is shaping up to be worse. An analysis by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas found the number of jobs secured by teens fell 25% last summer from the year prior, and the firm projects this year could produce the lowest summer hiring total for teens since federal tracking began in 1948.
Inflation, oil prices, and cautious hiring are among the factors Challenger, Gray and Christmas cites for the expected decline.
Many entry-level roles that once existed have been eliminated, and those that remain are on leaner teams that prefer more experienced candidates, even overqualified ones, according to a recruiting director at HR firm Insperity.
Teens most commonly work in food preparation, serving, and sales, but are increasingly competing against more experienced workers for those same positions.
White teens are more likely to be employed than teens from any other racial group, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center report.
Some teen job seekers report applying to 50 to 100 positions without a single offer, and have taken to Reddit and TikTok with accounts of phantom job postings, ghosting from managers, and applications that go nowhere.
Read more via Associated Press
