By Katie Merritt, Senior Research and Data Manager, Robert Half
The U.S. added about 2.2 million jobs in 2024, closing out the year with a jobs report that exceeded economists’ expectations. And Robert Half’s workplace research shows most employers in the United States entered 2025 in a hiring mode.
Six in 10 managers (63%) at companies of all sizes said they plan to add new permanent positions to their workforce in the first half of this year. Fifty-six percent of employers intend to expand their teams cited company growth as a primary factor.
Job openings in the U.S. are also largely outpacing pre-pandemic highs, according to the Demand for Skilled Talent report from Robert Half. The report highlights the latest data from our company’s surveys of hiring managers and our analysis of in-demand roles from a proprietary dataset of more than 6 million job postings, including 100,000-plus Robert Half placements. This resource, which Robert Half updates regularly, is intended to help hiring managers make informed staffing decisions.
This post takes a deeper dive into research for the latest edition of the Demand for Skilled Talent report. It provides an overview of key industries we expect will be likely to recruit talent in the first half of 2025, and jobs expected to be in high demand.
What industries are hiring right now?
What are the industries with the most job openings?
The business and professional services, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and tech and IT industries demonstrated the strongest annual job growth in the second half of 2024. These industries are poised to expand their employment opportunities throughout the first half of 2025, as well, according to Robert Half’s research.
The business and professional services, financial services, tech and IT, and manufacturing industries together contributed nearly 1 million new positions to the U.S. economy in the second half of 2024 (+991,500 jobs).
Here is a deeper dive into hiring trends in industries with the most job openings.
Business and professional services hiring trends
The unemployment rate in the business services industry in 2024 was 3.9%. This industry also had the most job openings in the last six months of 2024 (+664,800 jobs) compared with all other industries that Robert Half supports with our talent solutions.
Thirty percent of job openings in business and professional services were in administrative and customer support, 27% were in tech and IT, and 24% were in finance and accounting.
Here’s a look by functional area at some of the top jobs U.S. employers were recruiting for in the second half of 2024:
Tech and IT
Senior software engineer (+35,700 jobs)
Software engineer/developer (+20,900 jobs)
Systems administrator (+8,400 jobs)
Systems engineer (+7,700 jobs)
Finance and accounting
Accounting specialist (+9,200 jobs)
Staff accountant (+7,700 jobs)
Tax manager (+7,600 jobs)
Business analyst (+7,100 jobs)
Administrative and customer support
Customer service specialist (+36,600 jobs)
Administrative assistant (+35,700 jobs)
Administrative project manager (+31,200 jobs)
Receptionist (+19,700 jobs)
Consumer products hiring trends
Consumer products was the fifth-largest industry contributing to the job market in the second half of 2024, with 100,600 openings, a 15% increase from the first half of 2024.
Administrative and customer support roles made up over 50% of the new professional openings within this industry, totaling nearly 54,400 jobs. Other prominent roles in the consumer products space included:
Customer service specialist (+25,000 jobs)
Customer service manager (+5,900 jobs)
Senior software engineer (+3,500 jobs)
Customer experience specialist (+2,300 jobs)
Software engineer/developer (+2,100 jobs)
Product marketing manager (+1,600 jobs)
Education services hiring trends
Universities and educational organizations recruited talent for 44,400 job openings in the United States in the second half of 2024, a 46% increase from the same period in 2023. These jobs were predominantly in administrative and customer support (44%), followed by finance and accounting (20), and tech and IT (17%).
The unemployment rate in education services in 2024 was 2.5%. In the last six months of the year, the most in-demand jobs in this industry included:
Administrative assistant (+8,000 jobs)
Executive assistant (+1,800 jobs)
Administrative project manager (+1,300 jobs)
Financial services hiring trends
Employers in the financial services industry recruited talent for 110,790 jobs in the second half of 2024. That is an 81% increase from the second half of 2023, and it marks the sixth consecutive quarter of growth since Q3 2023. Year-on-year growth was strongest among jobs within finance and accounting and technology departments.
Thirty-two percent of the jobs in this industry were specifically in finance and accounting functions, while 27% were in tech and IT and administrative and customer support departments.
The most in-demand finance and accounting jobs in the financial services industry, which had an unemployment rate of 2.1% in 2024, included:
Mortgage underwriter (+2,700 jobs)
Loan processor (+2,700 jobs)
Senior financial analyst (+1,800 jobs)
Business analyst (+1,700 jobs)
Many employers in this industry were hiring tech and IT professionals. Roles in high demand included:
Senior software engineer (+9,200 jobs)
Software engineer/developer (+2,300 jobs)
IT product manager (+1,400 jobs)
Data engineer (+1,100 jobs)
Government and public sector hiring trends
Government and public sector employers added 34,100 jobs in the U.S. in the second half of 2024. The largest share of these jobs was in administrative and customer support (44%), followed by finance and accounting (25%), and tech and IT (15%).
The most in-demand finance and accounting jobs in this sector, which saw a 1.6% rate of unemployment in 2024, included:
Administrative assistant (+7,000 jobs)
Customer service specialist (+1,500 jobs)
Accounting specialist (1,200 jobs)
Legal assistant (+1,100 jobs)
Executive assistant (+1,000 jobs)
Office specialist (+1,000 jobs)
Healthcare hiring trends
Among the professional roles that Robert Half places in the healthcare industry, there were 145,200 new job openings added in the U.S. in the second half of 2024.
The bulk of these jobs were administrative or financial roles, including:
Medical receptionist (+24,000 jobs)
Administrative assistant (+13,400 jobs)
Medical front desk coordinator (+3,800 jobs)
Patient access/services specialist (+3,400 jobs)
Medical billing specialist (+2,900 jobs)
Manufacturing hiring trends
Among the professional roles that Robert Half places in the manufacturing industry, there were over 141,600 new job openings added in the U.S. in the last six months of 2024. These jobs were primarily in companies’ administrative and customer support (38%), tech and IT (27%) and finance and accounting (19%) departments.
The following roles were in particular demand in this industry, which saw an unemployment rate of 3.5% in 2024:
Senior software engineer (+8,700 jobs)
Administrative assistant (+6,100 jobs)
Customer service manager (+5,300 jobs)
Administrative project manager (+5,100 jobs)
Software engineer/developer (+4,700 jobs)
Procurement manager (+2,500 jobs)
Tech and IT hiring trends
The technology industry recruited talent for 70,700 jobs in the last half of 2024, a 52% increase from the same period in 2023. Companies in the technology sector primarily hired for their technology (44%) and marketing and creative (20%) functions.
The following technology and marketing and creative roles were in especially high demand in the tech and IT industry, which had a 0.7% unemployment rate in 2024:
Senior software engineer (+8,900 jobs)
Software engineer/developer (+5,100 jobs)
Product marketing manager (+2,300 jobs)
IT product manager (+1,800 jobs)
Systems engineer (+1,300 jobs)
Machine learning engineer (+1,200 jobs)
Marketing manager (+1,100 jobs)
Get more insights in Robert Half’s Demand for Skilled Talent report
View the report
As to the question, “What industries are hiring right now?” The answer is many. However, Robert Half’s research for our Demand for Skilled Talent report suggests many employers will likely struggle to meet their hiring goals in the months ahead. Ninety-one percent of U.S. hiring managers report they are already having difficulty locating talent—with more than a third (35%) saying it is very challenging.
Another trend may work against employers’ recruitment goals: In a Robert Half survey of more than 2,000 U.S. workers, only 29% of respondents said they plan to look for a new job during the first half of 2025. That’s down from 35% of workers surveyed by our company in July 2024 who said they were planning a job search. (See our infographic with a trend line of workers’ job search plans over time.)
For tips on how to overcome hiring challenges in the current labor market, plus more data on U.S. hiring and employment trends in 2025, read the full Demand for Skilled Talent report.
Methodology
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Industry calculations are based on job postings provided by Textkernel. Positions are categorized into more than 450 job titles within Robert Half’s 2025 Salary Guide using a proprietary mapping methodology that employs state-of-the-art large language models. This dataset includes roles across the finance and accounting, technology, marketing and creative, legal, administrative and customer support, human resources, and healthcare support professions.
