Price of attracting talent rises in 2024, index says
Price of attracting talent rises in 2024, index says

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The price of attracting talent rose in 2024, according to Recruitics’ latest Talent Market Index. It measures the cost of bringing in a candidate from recruitment advertising through a completed application.
Notable increases in the report released Jan. 16 were seen in hospitality, retail, and transportation and logistics.
“We saw really an appreciation in hospitality,” Recruitics CEO Adam Stafford said.
The index reading for hospitality is up 318.52% year over year. Recruitics noted sustained recovery and demand for service roles in hotels, resorts and travel-related businesses.
“What we expect for January is to soften a little bit, but with the new administration there could be some outsize impact,” Stafford said.
The Trump administration has released executive orders covering immigration that could impact the workforce, reducing the size of labor pool and thereby increasing the cost to attract workers.
Stafford noted other industries that are heavily staffed by immigrants are home health aides, cooks and housekeepers.
Recruitics’ report also noted the index reading for retail was up 288.57% year over year. The growth underscores the sector’s efforts to adapt to the ongoing shift toward e-commerce.
In transportation and logistics, the index reading rose 116.67% year over year. The increase points to sustained interest in logistics roles driven by e-commerce’s long-term expansion, according to Recruitics.
In healthcare, the index level rose 24.76% year over year. Healthcare had a clear upward trend in 2024, according to Recruitics. The price of recruitment rose even as the market for healthcare staffing remained difficult. Stafford noted the market for healthcare workers is now more crowded as health systems are doing more work to recruit their own staff and rely less on a contingent workforce. With more firms recruiting — including health systems and staffing firms — the cost of attracting talent has gone up.
Recruitics said its Talent Market Index aggregates billions of data points from job advertisements and proprietary Recruitics data tracking metrics, such as cost per click and cost per application, across diverse job categories each month.
The company is a provider of programmatic job advertising services.