Ryan Bradshaw

Layoffs.fyi counts 131,382 tech layoffs in 2026 so far, already above all of 2025, while CompTIA reports 625,633 active IT job postings, a three year high. AI skills carry an 18% to 62% pay premium and entry level hiring remains the weakest spot.

Employers put the average cost of a bad hire at nearly $17,000 (CareerBuilder, 2016) and $14,900 (2017), while turnover studies range from 16 percent of salary to two times salary. We trace every famous figure, including the untraceable DOL 30 percent claim.

A hire now takes about 200 to 291 applications (Gem, Ashby Q1 2026), only 3.6% to 4.7% of applicants reach an interview, and offer acceptance holds near 82% to 84%.

The best posting data puts ghost jobs at roughly 1 in 7 to 1 in 5 listings, while 40% of hiring managers admit their company posted one. Ontario's vacancy disclosure rule took effect January 1, 2026; New York's S8877 passed but is unsigned.

The latest SHRM average cost per hire is $5,475 for nonexecutive roles and $35,879 for executives (2025 survey), while SHRM's 2026 medians are $1,300 and $15,000. The old $4,700 figure dates from 2021 data.

SHRM's 2026 benchmarking puts median time to fill at 39 days for nonexecutive roles, while SmartRecruiters reports a 38 day median time to hire and Gem's average rose from 33 to 41 days between 2021 and 2024.

In August 2026, 1.9% of US workers quit their jobs, against a 2019 average of 2.3%. Accommodation and food services had the highest quits rate at 3.5%, and real estate and rental and leasing the lowest among private industries at 0.9%. Live BLS JOLTS data for every sector, updated each month.

In August 2026 there were 1.36 job openings for every hire in the US: 7.1 million openings against 5.2 million hires, from the BLS JOLTS survey. The 2019 average was 1.23 and the peak was 1.86 in March 2022. Updated automatically each month.