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HR Statistics You Need to Know for 2023
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Recruiting & Hiring

HR Statistics You Need to Know for 2023

The world of human resources is constantly evolving. Between job seekers with gig jobs like driving for Uber and high-tech advancements that enable remote work, employees have more power than ever. There’s a sustained desire to find a balance between work and life.

We also continue to see more job openings than available candidates. Job opportunities are abundant, meaning workers have fewer reasons to rely on and remain loyal to their employers. Especially if their employers don’t provide employee benefits and offer employees what they want.

As we enter 2023, we took a look at the stats and trends in human resources, hiring, and workplace culture. The future is here, so it’s important to understand the current employee engagement climate and be ready.

General HR Trends and Statistics

Candidates moving through the market have a range of opportunities, forcing companies and human resources managers to work harder than ever before to attract the best talent. With a healthy salary awaiting the average worker and less time spent looking for a job, it’s a candidate’s market.

  • 2022 median U.S. household income continued to rise, climbing to $78,813, an 8.9% increase over 2021.
  • Monthly job growth was down year-over-year, averaging 392,000 jobs per month in 2022, versus 562,000 per month in 2021, and unemployment is holding steady at around 4%.
  • The number of job openings as of October 2022 was 10.3 million.
  • The average salary for new graduates to the market is $55,260.
  • Time-to-hire has jumped from an average of 27 days to 41 days to hire onboard a new employee, but top candidates are taken off the market within 10 days.
  • The average job vacancy costs businesses a staggering $4,129 over those 41 days.
  • U.S. employers are experiencing the lowest job satisfaction rate in 20 years.
  • The disparity between employer and employee perception of loyalty is greatly skewed. 86% of employers believe their employees have a strong sense of loyalty to the company, but only 39% of employees would recommend their employer as a good place to work.

Employee Engagement and Retention

With the challenges companies face recruiting top talent, it’s more important than ever to work on keeping existing employees happy. By focusing on the evolving expectations candidates have for employers, companies can easily address today’s wants and needs, thus increasing employee retention.

Job Candidate Expectations

  • Candidates who expect an employer to provide a health & wellness programs have increased 26% over pre-pandemic surveys (26% vs. 52%).
  • The must-have of a flexible work schedule, including the opportunity for remote work, has increased 18% from 2020 to 2022 (37% vs. 55%)
  • Almost 75% of Millennial and Gen Z workers are planning to quit their jobs in 2023 due to a lack of learning opportunities.
  • 73% of job candidates say competitive wages are a driver of offer acceptance, yet only 37% of employers plan to offer them to attract talent. 

Finding Purpose

  • 64% of millennials would rather make less at a job they love than make more at a job they find boring.
  • 65% of employees say the pandemic made them rethink the place that work should have in their lives.

Employee Tenure

  • 65% of employees are actively searching for a new job, up from 39% in 2022.
  • The search for better company culture contributes to a majority of company turnover.
  • About 44% of Millennial and Gen Z workers in the United States have been with their current employer for 3 years or more.
  • Family status affects the desire to change jobs. Married employees are less likely to look for a new position than single people, but employees with children are more likely to job search.
  • More than half (53%) of millennials think they will leave their current employer by 2023.
  • Employees who say they plan to be with their current employer in 12 months dropped from 80% in 2018 to 70% in 2022.
  • In 2022, 66% of employees said they’re satisfied with their job. That number has dramatically dropped from 72% in 2021.

Recruiting and Hiring Statistics

One of the biggest concerns with modern recruiting is maintaining a level of diversity. Greater diversity has been proven again and again to help a company thrive. But with a shortage of talent and the importance of new recruitment strategies and the interview process, companies ought to be on their best behavior.

A Good First Impression

  • According to 86% of recruiters, 2023 will continue to be a candidate-driven market.
  • By 2030, there will be an estimated 85 million job vacancies worldwide due to a lack of skilled labor.
  • Interviews aren’t just for the employer. 95% of candidates believe the way they’re treated during the interview reflects how they’ll be treated as an employee.
  • “Ghosting” isn’t just for dating relationships anymore. Almost half of candidates are no-shows for their interviews or first day of work.

Seeking Diversity

  • 78% of companies have made it an initiative to hire diversely.
  • Employees who work in a company with high fair treatment perform at a level that is 26% greater than those who don’t. 
  • Only 22% of HR leaders characterize their workplace as having a high degree of fairness.
  • 34% of job candidates (vs. 24% pre-pandemic) require a prospective employer to offer DE&I programs or affinity groups before they’ll consider accepting a role.
  • Among companies that offer training, the most common DEI-related training program is unconscious bias training (69%).

The Future of Employment

With the rise of the gig economy, the Great Reshuffle, and emerging technology, it’s safe to say that the job landscape has been fundamentally altered. Flexible schedules, rising wages, and shifting benefits are the.

A New Way to Work

  • 40% of employees say they’re more productive and engaged working from home.
  • 86% of employees want to work from home at least 2 days a week, and just 3% of white-collar workers want to return to the office 5 days a week.
  • Only 4% of HR leaders say their companies are requiring all employees to return to the workplace full-time.
  • 23% of employees would take a 10% pay cut to work from home indefinitely.

Raising the Pay

  • 20% of families that earn minimum wage live below the poverty line.
  • Depending on the state, a single person making a living wage can, at minimum, live on about $11 an hour but must make at least $17.46 an hour to live in a more expensive city (but they’d still need roommates).
  • More than 31.9% of the U.S. labor force, or 51.9 million workers, currently makes less than $15/hour, and many are stuck at the federal minimum wage, which is still less than half that rate.
  • 76.2% of minimum wage workers are White 20.7% are Hispanic, 13.5% are Black, and 4% are Asian. 63.5% are women, and 34.4% are high school graduates with no college education.
  • Louisiana has the highest percentage of workers who are paid minimum wage (3.2%), and Oregon has the lowest percentage of minimum wage workers, with 0.3%.

Emerging Technology

  • Most employers are optimistic about the addition of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to their companies.
  • Emerging technology has automated and redefined jobs, rather than replaced them.
  • 98.8% of Fortune 500 companies use an applicant tracking system (ATS) while 66% of large companies and 35% of small organizations rely on them.
  • More than 85% of recruiters use social media to source candidates, and 73% of millennials found their current roles through social media.
  • Nearly one in four organizations use automation or artificial intelligence (AI) to support hiring.
  • A negative review of a company on Glassdoor leads to more than 50% of candidates declining an offer.

Looking Forward

  • By 2025 Millennials and Gen Z will make up nearly 64% of the labor force.
  • In 2027, 86.5 million people will be freelancing in the United States and will make up 50.9 percent of the total U.S. workforce.
  • New HR roles in 2025 could include Social Policy & Community Activist; Data, Talent & Technology Integrator; Global Talent Scout, Convener, and Coach; Virtual Culture Architect; and the Organizational Engineer. 

A note about our sources:

To compile this list, we reviewed a variety of third-party sources to offer a comprehensive view of the HR landscape as it is today. We vetted the sources to ensure that the statistics referenced are all from credible experts in the field, including Economic Policy Institute, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, LinkedIn, MetLife, Pew Research, SHRM, and the U.S. government, among others.

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