It’s been a tumultuous few years in hiring. From the sudden hiring freezes in 2020 in response to Covid to the frenzy to backfill positions from the Great Resignation, hiring demand has been all over the place. 2022 saw exceptionally high demand for candidates, with nearly two job openings available for each person who was actively looking for work. So we wanted to know: what can we expect next year when it comes to hiring demand, and how confident do employers feel about their meeting it?
As a part of our 2022 Hiring Benchmark Report, we asked hiring professionals from across industries and around the world how much hiring they expect to do next year. The results show that hiring demand may finally be leveling out.
41% of companies are planning to hire less in 2023 compared to this year. 31% are expecting their hiring volumes to remain around the same, and just 27% of respondents expect to be doing more hiring in 2023 compared to 2022. This data is fascinating when juxtaposed with our findings on how much growth companies are expecting next year, where 78% of respondents expect positive growth in 2023.
Overall, hiring professionals are predicting to a 3.9% decrease in their hiring volume for next year. This decrease in hiring volume may help push the pendulum of the job market back towards the center, away from being strictly a candidate’s market.
Interestingly, this decrease in demand for hiring doesn’t appear to mean a decrease in hiring spend. In fact, the opposite appears to be true: HR budgets are expected to rise next year.
Part of this may be related to inflation: as the price of just about everything has jumped in the last year, the cost of doing business has gone up as well. Our US-based respondents expect their HR budgets will increase by 7.4% in the next year.
Perhaps it’s this one-two punch of decreased demand and increased budgets that has the average hiring professional feeling so confident. Each year, we like to take the pulse of our respondents to see how they’re feeling about their hiring process.
This year, hiring professionals display overwhelming confidence:
37% of our respondents say they are very confident in their hiring process, an impressive 22% increase from last year’s benchmark report. 43% are at least a little confident, 15% feel ambivalent, and just 5% feel less than confident about their hiring process. It will be interesting to see how this increased confidence influences hiring decisions in 2023, especially as the tables begin to turn towards employer’s favor.
To gain more insight into what you can expect in the world of hiring next year, download your copy of the 2022 Hiring Benchmark Report today!
