Hiring numbers are everywhere, but most of them are about big companies with full talent acquisition teams. This page collects the most useful recent statistics for the people who actually run hiring at growing companies: owners, operations leaders and HR managers at companies with 20 to 200 people, plus the staffing firms that serve them.

Every number below comes from a named public source, listed at the end with a link. We update this page as new data comes out.

Key takeaways

• Openings are hard to fill: 82% of small businesses that were hiring had few or no qualified applicants in August 2026.

• Applications are up, but signal is down: 79% of HR pros get more applications per role, and 31% say too many look the same because of AI.

• Speed decides who gets hired: 51% of candidates who ghosted an employer had already accepted another job.

• Turnover is expensive: replacing an employee can cost one-half to two times their annual salary.

• The skilled trades and healthcare are the tightest: construction unemployment hit a record low of 3.1%, and medical assistants are the hardest practice role to hire.

Using these statistics? You're welcome to quote any number on this page in your own articles, presentations or reports. Please credit My Expert Recruiter and link back to this page, and cite the original source listed at the end.

The hiring market in 2026

• 35% of small business owners had job openings they could not fill in August 2026. [1]

• 82% of small business owners who were hiring or trying to hire said they had few or no qualified applicants in August 2026. [1]

• In September 2026, 32% of small business owners reported openings they could not fill, and 87% of those hiring or trying to hire reported few or no qualified applicants. [2]

• 3.1 million US workers quit their jobs in August 2026, a quits rate of 1.9%. [3]

• US manufacturing had 522,000 job openings in August 2026 (preliminary), up from 416,000 a year earlier. [4]

• US construction had 251,000 job openings in August 2026 (preliminary), down from 299,000 in July. [4]

Application volume and AI

• 79% of US HR and talent acquisition professionals say application volume per role has gone up compared with two years ago. Fewer than 1% say it went down. [5]

• Only 12% name "not enough applicants overall" as a hiring challenge, the least chosen option. [5]

• 31% say too many applications that all look the same because of AI is one of their top hiring challenges. [5]

• 76% say the share of their time spent sorting and screening applications has gone up. [5]

• 64% agree that screening and admin work leave them too little time for real conversations with candidates. [5]

• Only 18% of HR professionals feel very confident their process can catch AI-assisted misrepresentation. [5]

• 22% of job seekers use bots to apply to roles automatically. [6]

• 28% of job seekers admit using AI to create fake work samples, and 32% have claimed AI skills they don't have. [6]

• Gartner predicts that by 2028, 1 in 4 candidate profiles will be fake. [7]

• 62% of hiring managers in one survey said they had fired workers over AI-inflated résumés. [8]

Ghosting, no-shows and speed

• 60% of HR professionals say someone on their team has had a candidate fail to show up for a scheduled interview. [5]

• 59% say interview no-shows happen more often than two years ago. [5]

• 48% experienced burnout related to hiring work in the past year, and 42% report wasted interview time for hiring managers. [5]

• 25% of US workers have ghosted a potential employer. [9]

• Of those, 51% did it because they accepted another job, 32% because they lost interest and 23% because of a negative interview experience or poor communication. [9]

• 29% say consistent communication and timely updates would prevent ghosting, and 23% say clear timelines for next steps would. [9]

• 66% of recent job seekers say an employer went silent on them after an interview. [10]

Job posts and pay transparency

• Only 10% of employed US workers say job descriptions always accurately reflect the role. [11]

• 78% are at least somewhat likely to abandon an application after a vague job description. [11]

• 85% are more likely to apply when challenges and expectations are clearly outlined, and 76% trust a realistic description more. [11]

• 60% of job seekers would not apply to a posting without a salary range. [12]

• 46% say unrealistic requirements discourage them from applying. [12]

• 59% of US job postings included salary information as of May 2025. [13]

The cost of hiring and turnover

• Contingency recruiters usually earn a fee of about 20% to 25% of the role's first-year cash compensation. Retained searches run about 33%. [14]

• The average cost per hire is nearly $4,700. [15]

• The median time to fill, from requisition opened to offer accepted, is about a month and a half. [16]

• Replacing an employee can cost one-half to two times their annual salary, and Gallup calls that a conservative estimate. [17]

• 52% of employees who voluntarily left say their manager or organization could have done something to keep them. [17]

• 51% of employees who left say no manager or leader spoke with them about their job satisfaction or future in the three months before they left. [17]

• Only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job onboarding new employees. [18]

• The median annual wage for human resources specialists, the occupation that includes recruiters, was $75,940 in May 2025. [19]

• Benefits make up 31.5% of total compensation costs for full-time private industry workers. [20]

Construction

• Construction needs to bring in 349,000 net new workers in 2026 and 456,000 in 2027. About one-fifth of all electricians are over 55. [21]

• 87% of construction firms report openings for hourly craft workers, and 82% for salaried positions. [22]

• 88% of firms with craft openings say those positions are as hard or harder to fill than a year ago. [22]

• Among firms with openings for each role, 81% report difficulty filling electrician positions, 77% HVAC technicians, 76% concrete workers, 75% superintendents and 72% estimators. [22]

• 83% of firms report at least some turnover among new field employees in their first 90 days, and 42% say new hires fail to show up or quit shortly after starting. [22]

• 42% of contractors say worker shortages, their own or their subcontractors', delayed projects. [22]

• 73% of contractors expect to add employees in the next 12 months. Only 8% expect to reduce headcount. [22]

• Unemployment among recent construction workers fell to 3.1% in August 2026, the lowest in the 26-year history of the data. [23]

• Construction managers earned a median of $114,990 in May 2025, with about 49,700 openings projected each year from 2025 to 2035. [24]

• Cost estimators earned a median of $78,740 in May 2025, with about 17,600 openings a year, even as employment is projected to decline 3%. [25]

Manufacturing and field service

• US manufacturing could need as many as 3.8 million new workers between 2024 and 2033, and 1.9 million of those jobs could go unfilled. [26]

• 65% of manufacturers say attracting and retaining talent is their primary business challenge. [26]

• About 47% of manufacturers cited attracting and retaining a quality workforce as a primary business challenge in Q2 2026, and 36.5% expect to increase full-time hiring over the next year. [27]

• About 197,000 manufacturing workers quit their jobs in August 2026 (preliminary). [28]

• About 51,900 openings are projected each year for industrial machinery mechanics, maintenance workers and millwrights, with employment growing 14% from 2025 to 2035. [29]

• About 30,400 openings are projected each year for machinists and tool and die makers, all from replacing workers. Machinists earned a median of $58,750 in May 2025. [30]

• There are about 170,000 CNC tool operators in the US, with a median wage of $50,690 in May 2025. [31]

• About 40,600 openings are projected each year for HVAC mechanics and installers, with employment growing 11% from 2025 to 2035. [32]

Healthcare

• 47% of medical practice leaders say medical assistants are the hardest staff role to hire, ahead of nurses at 15%. [33]

• 28% of medical practice leaders said staff turnover was higher in 2026 than the year before. [34]

• About 109,700 openings are projected each year for medical assistants, on top of roughly 833,900 jobs today. [35]

• About 203,300 openings are projected each year for nursing assistants and orderlies. [36]

• About 1.9 million openings are projected each year across all healthcare occupations. [37]

• Health care added 17,000 jobs in September 2026, 13,000 of them in ambulatory health care services. [38]

• Certified nursing assistants in hospitals had a turnover rate of 32.5% in 2025, and patient care techs 33.8%. [39]

• 29.5% of new hospital employees left within their first year. [39]

• 70.7% of hospitals want to reduce their reliance on travel and agency staff. [39]

Staffing industry

• Nearly 2.2 million temporary and contract employees worked for US staffing companies in an average week of 2024, and staffing companies hired 12.7 million of them over a year. [40]

• US staffing companies employed an average of two million temporary and contract workers per week in Q4 2025. [41]

• Temporary and contract staffing employment fell 7.5%, or 154,000 jobs, from Q4 2025 to Q1 2026, the usual seasonal dip. [42]

• Total staffing employment grew 0.6% year over year in Q2 2026, the first year-to-year growth since late 2022. [43]

• Recruiter call time reached 286 minutes per week in Q1 2026, the highest on record and double the level of Q1 2024. [44]

• Staffing clients are consolidating their providers, and some are building their own internal programs. [45]

Interviewing and selection

• Structured interviews had the highest average validity among the hiring methods reviewed in a 2022 meta-analysis, an estimated .42. [46]

• Using pre-made questions, guides and scoring rubrics saved an average of 40 minutes per interview at Google. [47]

• Rejected candidates who had a structured interview were 35% happier than those who did not. [47]

What these numbers mean for a growing company

Put the data together and a clear picture shows up. There are plenty of applicants, but fewer of them fit, and many are written or even sent with AI. The good candidates are talking to several employers at once and move on quickly when a company is slow. And when a recruiter or a key hire leaves, the cost is far bigger than one salary.

For a company with 20 to 200 people, the answer usually isn't more job posts. It's someone who owns hiring every day: screening fast, calling back the same day, finding the people who aren't applying and keeping the process moving.

Want to see what an empty recruiter seat costs your company? Try our recruiter turnover cost calculator. If you'd rather talk it through, book a call with the My Expert Recruiter team.

Sources

1. NFIB, "Labor Demand Takes a Step Back in August," NFIB Jobs Report, August 2026 survey of 476 member firms. nfib.com

2. NFIB, "Small Business Hiring Slows, but Labor Shortages Persist," NFIB Jobs Report, September 2026 survey of 411 member firms. nfib.com

3. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary," August 2026 data, released Sept. 29, 2026. bls.gov

4. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, JOLTS, "Table 1. Job openings levels and rates by industry and region, seasonally adjusted," released Sept. 29, 2026 (preliminary August 2026 data). bls.gov

5. LHH, "Candidates ghosting employers," July 29, 2026. Survey of 500 US HR and talent acquisition professionals, conducted by Censuswide, June 23 to July 2, 2026. lhh.com

6. Greenhouse, "Fighting bias, bots and burnout: Global job market trends from the Greenhouse 2025 Workforce & Hiring Report," July 15, 2025. 2,200 job seekers in the US, UK and Ireland. greenhouse.com

7. HR Dive, "By 2028, 1 in 4 candidate profiles will be fake, Gartner predicts," Aug. 8, 2025, reporting Gartner's survey of 3,000 job candidates. hrdive.com

8. Staffing Hub, "62% of Employers Have Fired Workers Over AI-Inflated Resumes," Oct. 3, 2025, reporting an AIResumeBuilder.com survey of nearly 1,000 hiring managers. staffinghub.com

9. CPA Practice Advisor, "One in Four Job Seekers Have Ghosted a Potential Employer," March 12, 2026, reporting LiveCareer's survey of more than 1,000 US workers. cpapracticeadvisor.com

10. Allwork.Space, "66% Of Job Seekers Have Been Ghosted By Employers During The Hiring Process," Sept. 30, 2026, reporting a NumberBarn survey. allwork.space

11. Monster, "Vague Job Descriptions Are Costing Employers Candidates," Aug. 24, 2026. Survey of 1,060 employed US workers, July 14 to 15, 2026. monster.com

12. Monster, "Job Posting Red Flags Are Turning Candidates Away Before They Apply," May 8, 2026. monster.com

13. Indeed, "Pay Transparency Across High-Earning Sectors," press release, July 2, 2025. indeed.com

14. SHRM, "How to Work Effectively with an Executive Search Firm," Mark Feffer, July 18, 2016. shrm.org

15. SHRM, "The Real Costs of Recruitment," April 11, 2022. shrm.org

16. SHRM, "2025 Recruiting Executives Benchmarking: Insights to Maximize Recruitment," data brief, 2,371 SHRM member respondents. shrm.org

17. Gallup, "This Fixable Problem Costs U.S. Businesses $1 Trillion," Shane McFeely and Ben Wigert, March 13, 2019. gallup.com

18. Gallup, "Why the Onboarding Experience Is Key for Retention," May 16, 2018, updated April 8, 2026. gallup.com

19. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, "Human Resources Specialists," last modified Aug. 27, 2026. bls.gov

20. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026," released Sept. 9, 2026. bls.gov

21. Associated Builders and Contractors, "ABC: Construction Industry Must Attract 349,000 Workers in 2026 Despite Macroeconomic Headwinds," January 2026. abc.org

22. Associated General Contractors of America and NCCER, "2026 Workforce Survey Analysis," survey conducted July and August 2026, 1,830 responses. agc.org

23. Associated General Contractors of America, "Contractors Add 22,000 Jobs In August, Construction Unemployment Rate Hits Record Low Of 3.1%," Sept. 4, 2026. agc.org

24. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, "Construction Managers." bls.gov

25. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, "Cost Estimators," last modified Aug. 27, 2026. bls.gov

26. Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute, "US Manufacturing Could Need as Many as 3.8 Million New Employees by 2033," April 3, 2024. prnewswire.com

27. National Association of Manufacturers, "NAM Manufacturers' Outlook Survey, Second Quarter 2026," June 10, 2026, 215 responses. nam.org

28. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, JOLTS, "Table 4. Quits levels and rates by industry and region, seasonally adjusted," released Sept. 29, 2026 (preliminary August 2026 data). bls.gov

29. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, "Industrial Machinery Mechanics, Machinery Maintenance Workers, and Millwrights." bls.gov

30. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, "Machinists and Tool and Die Makers." bls.gov

31. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, "Metal and Plastic Machine Workers." bls.gov

32. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, "Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers." bls.gov

33. MGMA Stat, "Why medical assistants are still tougher to hire today than nurses, coders and other medical practice staff," May 7, 2025. mgma.com

34. MGMA Stat, "Stabilized but not solved: Staff turnover in medical practices looking no better, no worse in 2026," May 28, 2026. mgma.com

35. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, "Medical Assistants," last modified Aug. 27, 2026. bls.gov

36. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, "Nursing Assistants and Orderlies," last modified Aug. 27, 2026. bls.gov

37. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, "Healthcare Occupations." bls.gov

38. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "The Employment Situation, September 2026," released Oct. 2, 2026. bls.gov

39. NSI Nursing Solutions, "2026 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report," March 2026 (527 hospitals). nsinursingsolutions.com

40. American Staffing Association, "Staffing Industry Statistics." americanstaffing.net

41. American Staffing Association, "Staffing Employment and Sales Rebound in Fourth Quarter," March 30, 2026. americanstaffing.net

42. American Staffing Association, "U.S. Staffing Industry's Seasonal Declines Narrow in First Quarter of 2026," June 25, 2026. americanstaffing.net

43. American Staffing Association, "Staffing Industry Grows Year-to-Year in the Second Quarter," press release, Sept. 22, 2026. prnewswire.com

44. American Staffing Association and Prodoscore, Staffing Productivity Report, press release, June 4, 2026. prnewswire.com

45. American Staffing Association, "Top 5 Staffing Trends to Watch For 2026," Tiffani R. Alexander, Jan. 6, 2026. americanstaffing.net

46. Sackett, P. R., Zhang, C., Berry, C. M., and Lievens, F. (2022). "Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection." Journal of Applied Psychology, 107, 2040 to 2068. doi.org

47. Google re:Work, "A guide to structured interviewing for better hiring practices," updated March 2026. withgoogle.com

Last updated: October 2026.

Contacts
+1 (470) 387-8333