Recruitment statistics 2026

Recent primary research puts the broad average in the low-40-day range: the Josh Bersin Company and AMS measured a global average time-to-hire of 43 days in Q1 2023, based on roughly 250,000 hires. Specialist and technical roles take longer — professional-services roles averaged 47 days, and energy and defense, the slowest-hiring sector, exceeded 67 days.

SHRM benchmarking puts the average U.S. cost-per-hire at roughly $4,700 (2022), with a median of $4,425 across all industries in its widely-cited benchmarking table (FY2016 data). Executive hires cost far more — a median of about $14,936, roughly three times a non-executive hire.

Adoption is concentrated among large employers, who generate the highest share of ATS revenue, according to Grand View Research. The global ATS market was about $2.7 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $5.7 billion by 2034 (Global Market Insights), having grown from roughly $2.1 billion in 2021.

AI is now mainstream in hiring. SHRM found that 51% of organizations use AI to support recruiting — the most common HR application of AI — and 89% of HR professionals using it for recruiting say it saves time or increases efficiency. SHRM also found 43% of organizations used AI for HR tasks in 2025, up from 26% the year before.

Industry funnel benchmarks from Nucleus Research and iCIMS put the average at about 132 applicants per open requisition (2026). Of those, only ~31% are considered qualified and the industry-average interview-to-hire ratio is about 26% — so roughly one hire for every four candidates interviewed. Application completion rates are low too, around 24%.

Gallup estimates the cost to replace a departing employee at roughly 0.5× to 2× their annual salary, depending on role and seniority. Turnover is also tightly linked to engagement: Gallup finds 18%–43% higher turnover in low-engagement teams than in high-engagement ones. Despite this, SHRM's 2025 benchmarking found only 20% of organizations actually track quality of hire.

Greenhouse's 2024 State of Job Hunting Report found 61% of job seekers have been ghosted by an employer after a job interview — up 9 points since April 2024. Candidate frustration runs both ways: 72% of candidates in Greenhouse's 2025 report said the job they were offered differed from what was advertised.

India's IT industry employed about 5.43 million people (NASSCOM Strategic Review 2024) and remained a net hirer. Its AI talent pool is projected to reach 1.25 million by 2027 (NASSCOM–Deloitte), and the Global Capability Centre workforce is projected at 3.46 million by 2030 — making India the world's largest base for offshore, staff-augmentation, and employer-of-record hiring.