4 Labor Market Trends to Watch in 2025

We’ve spent the past 12 months watching labor market trends develop through the lens of millions of unique job postings. That data, combined with information from dozens of media reports, gives us a lot of insight about what happened in 2024 and what might lie ahead in 2025.

Read on for four trends you can expect to see unfold in the year to come.

1. Salary Transparency Becomes the Norm

2024 trend: As more states were mandating salary transparency – Alaska, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, and Washington had transparency laws in effect in 2024 – more postings were including salary information. By the end of the year, 42.7 percent of postings contained salary data, compared with just 32.6 percent at the end of 2023 – a 31 percent increase.

Analysis: While state mandates may be the main driver behind the rise in salary transparency, transparency increased in all states last year. And there’s a good reason to hop on the bandwagon. Jobs with salary data continue to be filled faster than those without – recent data shows the average duration of listings with and without salary information to be 29 and 37 days, respectively.

2025 outlook: As more state mandates come online in 2025 – including in Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Vermont – and salary transparency generally becomes more prevalent, job seekers will come to expect it. And those openings that include salary information will continue to get more attention than those without.

That said, many employers are going to have to get with the program this year. A recent study found that 75 percent of companies aren’t ready for salary transparency.

2. AI Jobs on the Rise

2024 trend: As AI development continued to grow, AI-related job vacancies did likewise. While there were more than 5,100 AI job openings at the end of 2023, that number shot up to more than 7,500 by the end of 2024 – an increase of 47 percent (compared with just a six percent increase in IT vacancies overall).

Analysis: AI shows no signs of slowing down, which means job openings requiring AI skills and experience will also likely continue to grow. 

2025 outlook: While we expect AI job openings to continue growing this year, there may not be much opportunity to capitalize on the trend. After all, AI jobs peaked at 7,583 in 2024; compare that with fields like retail and healthcare, which regularly have tens of thousands of jobs open.  

For a deeper dive into AI job growth and its impact on the labor market, check out the latest analysis from our partner Veritone.

3. A Strong Showing for Retail

2024 trend: Despite the continued strength of online commerce, retail associate held the top spot for total job vacancies posted in 2024, with 1.7 million openings live at some time during the year.

Analysis: One likely reason for the high number of retail associate vacancies is the high turnover that tends to plague the industry. In Q3, we saw that wholesale CPC rates were down 18.5 percent for retail, suggesting that employers are having less difficulty filling these roles. That signal, coupled with slightly rising unemployment numbers, suggests that retailers may have an easier time filling roles and keeping them filled in 2025.

2025 outlook: Strong consumer spending in December suggests that the retail sector will fare well in 2025, even as many consumers have mixed feelings about the economy overall.

4. RTO v. Remote: The Battle Continues

2024 trend: Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, and a number of other high-profile companies began to call their employees back to the office full time in 2024. Even so, the number of remote job openings leveled off and began to climb after consistently trending downward in 2023. By the end of 2024, 3.4 percent of total vacancies were remote, compared with 2.9 percent at the same time in 2023. 

Analysis: The push-pull of in-office v. remote may be starting to normalize, particularly in those industries where it seems to work well. In fact, those sectors with the most remote openings in 2023 – including IT and marketing – saw even more remote openings in 2024:

• IT: 10.4% in 2023 vs. 14.9% in 2024
• Marketing: 10.0% in 2023 vs. 11.5% in 2024

2025 outlook: Expect to see a more stable – or even growing – roster of remote openings, especially as employees continue to seek more flexibility. While some companies will hold fast to their RTO policies, they may see an exodus of talent as a result. A recent survey, for example, found that 57 percent of respondents said they would seek out a new position if they could no longer work remotely in their current job.

Then again, that may be the point: some analysts have suggested that large enterprises are using RTO orders to reduce headcount without actually doing layoffs.

Be 2025-Ready with Real-Time Labor Market Data

What do the above trends and predictions have in common? They’re all based on timely labor market data. It’s the lifeblood of any recruitment tech company looking to stay ahead of the latest developments – and the competition.

If you’re interested in labor market data for a specific industry, region, or time period, get in touch to see how it can work for you with a free trial.