From ad budgets to market positioning, strategic hiring has market intelligence behind it. Learn the seven signals to watch and how to translate them into concrete strategies for your organization.

What if the most powerful signals in talent acquisition (TA) aren’t the ones everyone’s tracking?

Drawing on millions of job postings, resumé updates, and public domain employer ratings, Dan Quigg, CEO of Public Insight, has pulled together the market intelligence that matters most right now. You can find all of his advice in our May roundtable replay, but in case you’re short on time, we’ve got the seven most impactful data trends that you can’t miss if you want to make informed, competitive hiring decisions in 2025.

1. Compensation Landscape

• Pay for most jobs has settled down and isn’t bouncing around like it was last year, but pay ranges on job ads are getting wider again, so it’s harder to tell what competitors are actually paying.

When we look at millions of job postings (mostly from Indeed) through April, the data shows that after a stretch of volatility, mid-range posted salaries have mostly leveled off over the last seven or eight months. The picture gets more detailed when we dig into specific sectors: transportation, for example, has seen a dip—maybe just cyclical—while tech and financial services have bounced back from last year’s slump and are now thriving. But overall, salaries are stabilizing.

The second trend coming out of the data is that pay ranges on job ads are getting wider again, making it tougher to know what employers are really offering. Quigg’s market landscape data looks at compensation ranges as a percentage of the midpoint, which means finding the middle point between the minimum and maximum advertised salaries for a role, then measuring how wide the range is compared to that midpoint. This helps us see how open or narrow pay bands really are, and gives insight into both pay levels and how transparent companies are in salary disclosures.

Early in the pay transparency movement, job boards like Indeed kept a tight lid on range spreads, usually between 18% and 23%, to prevent unrealistic postings. Recently, those controls have relaxed, and range spreads have increased to around 24–25%, with some roles (like nurses, shown in the chart) showing even wider bands. What you’re looking at here, for example, is a blue line showing the midpoint salary for nurses ($95,891) intersecting with the red line showing the range percentage, so you can easily see which job titles are paying more and which have broader pay bands.

The widening of these bands may indicate some employers are using broader ranges to comply with transparency laws while keeping real pay practices under wraps. The higher that percentage climbs, the less helpful salary transparency becomes, and the harder it is to know what competitors are paying. Of course, there can be good reasons for wider ranges, but in general, looking at both the compensation landscape and how pay ranges are structured gives organizations a clearer sense of where they stand in the market—and how candidates might interpret their offers.

2. Estimated Fill Days and Rates

• It’s getting a little easier to fill jobs, but there’s still a lot of variation depending on the role and employer.

Quigg’s team tracks millions of job postings to estimate how long it takes to fill a position (“fill days”) and what percentage of roles actually get filled (“fill rate,” shown as the blue line on the graph). These numbers are based on when job ads expire, not confirmed hires, so they aren’t perfect for tracking individual placements. Still, when you look at such a huge dataset, the law of large numbers makes this a pretty solid way to measure how quickly hiring is happening across the market.

Right now, it takes about 49 days on average to fill a job, which is a bit quicker than a few months ago. Some sectors are still slower—retail, for example, is at 55.7 days—but overall, most employers are having an easier time filling roles than earlier in the year.

This data really becomes useful when you compare your own hiring speed to the wider market. For instance, the chart above shows Sanford Health is taking much longer than average to fill nursing roles. There could be a few reasons for this, like lower salaries or even the type of applicant tracking system being used, since different systems can impact how postings are managed and how fast candidates move through the process. If you want a more focused comparison, it helps to look at organizations using the same technology as you.

And for a bit of perspective: ten years ago, the average time to fill was 44 days. Now it’s closer to 49. All the new technology in the world hasn’t made it much faster.

“Ten years ago, the number of days to fill was 44 days. In 10 years, we’ve gotten worse by four to five days. All the technology in the world has not made it better.” – Leah Daniels, Job Sync

3. Active Resumes

• Fewer people are actively putting their résumés out there, making the candidate market quieter than it’s been in a while.

Since March, there has been a sharp drop—about 37%—in new, non-duplicate résumés showing up on job boards. This slowdown is happening across almost every industry. When you look at this alongside government quit rates, it’s clear that most workers are staying put, and the overall job-seeker market is pretty passive right now.

It’s easy for companies to celebrate their retention programs and take credit for lower quit rates, but Quigg points out that this trend has more to do with the broader market than with any one organization’s efforts. The recent uptick in AI-generated résumés is real, but the big picture is that fewer people are openly signaling they’re looking for work—especially in a public way.

5. Supply and Demand

• In most industries, there are now more open jobs than people actively looking to fill them.

To get a sense of how supply and demand stack up, the chart compares the number of active résumés (people signaling they’re looking) with the number of net open positions, filtering out reposts to get a true picture. When you lay these numbers side by side, it’s clear that in 10 out of 12 sectors, demand for workers now outpaces supply. Simply, there aren’t enough candidates on the market to fill the open roles.

Healthcare is the most extreme example, with nearly twice as many open jobs as active job seekers—about 3.7 million openings versus 1.9 million résumés. Nurse unemployment remains around 2%, well below the national average. Only retail and professional services have more candidates than jobs, likely due to seasonal shifts and the nature of the roles available.

This supply-demand gap serves as a useful monthly check for talent teams. If your industry is in the red, expect tougher competition for every qualified candidate.

“Ten of the twelve sectors now have more open jobs than people actively looking, and in healthcare, the shortage is especially stark.” – Dan Quigg

5. Employer Reputation

• Employer ratings are down, and job seekers are noticing.

The employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is a key measure of how likely people are to recommend their workplace to others. This “raving fans” metric is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors—those with negative experiences—from promoters, who are genuinely positive about their workplace, while ignoring the neutrals.

Before the pandemic, eNPS scores typically hovered in the mid-20s. In recent months, though, these scores have dropped sharply, hitting lows around 17 before inching back up to 18.2. That means there are far fewer raving fans than before, and plenty of work left to do.

Looking beyond the numbers, sentiment analysis shows what’s driving negative reviews: issues like poor communication, scheduling, and management come up again and again. The good news is that many of these problems are fixable. The data also makes it clear that reputation dips are happening across the board, so if your score is down, it’s not necessarily a reason to panic. The real question is how you compare to similar employers—are you doing better or worse than your peers?

Another trend to watch: our candidate preferences survey from earlier this year found that younger candidates, especially Gen Z, are much more sensitive to negative experiences like ghosting or clunky application processes. If you hire heavily from this demographic and your hiring process isn’t up to par, it can show up quickly in your ratings and impact your ability to attract top talent.

6. ATTRIBUTE MAPPING

• AI competencies are appearing across the board, not just in the obvious tech job titles.

Instead of only tracking specific skills, Quigg’s team looks at a wider range of attributes that appear in job postings. It’s immediately clear how widespread AI has become in job requirements, reaching far beyond roles like machine learning engineer or data scientist. Today, you’ll find AI mentioned in job descriptions for writers, product managers, and many other positions. 

The reality is, AI isn’t a “job” anymore. If you’re only searching for AI in job titles, you’re missing how this technology is woven into positions across the workforce

7. Untapped Talent Pools

• Employers are using fair chance opportunities to get in front of more candidates, and these roles now span far more job types than you might expect.

Attribute mapping also helps surface untapped talent pools. For example, “fair chance” jobs—roles open to candidates with a criminal record—aren’t just limited to warehouses or entry-level positions anymore. Surprising roles like front end developer are now topping the list, reflecting how employers are broadening their search to include career changers and non-traditional backgrounds. 

While it’s unlikely we’ll see this kind of broadening in fields like nursing, where many years of specialized training are required, the trend looks very different in other areas. It is especially relevant for remote-friendly jobs or roles where skills can be picked up quickly. Coding bootcamps, for example, are turning teachers or geologists into developers and employers are increasingly targeting these nontraditional candidates to fill critical gaps in their teams.

Final Words

Market data moves slowly and steadily because it’s drawn from so many public sources, so you rarely see wild swings. This gives you a stable benchmark to compare against your own hiring trends. If your internal numbers are rising or dipping, it’s worth checking how the broader market is moving before making big changes. Looking at your data in the context of the wider market helps you make smarter, more grounded decisions for your team.