Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared on Monster.
Monster’s 2026 Job Market Outlook, based on full-year 2025 job posting and job seeker data, shows that employer demand is holding firm in healthcare, essential services, infrastructure-related roles, and skill-based jobs, even as other parts of the market slow.
Rather than broad-based growth or decline, the labor market is increasingly defined by concentration.
Understanding where demand is structurally supported can help job seekers focus their efforts, shorten hiring timelines, and make more resilient career decisions in 2026.
What job seekers should know right now:
- Healthcare remains the strongest hiring engine, but opportunity extends well beyond traditional clinical roles
- Skill-based, credentialed, and hands-on jobs continue to outperform white-collar support roles
- Industries are diverging, with some expanding, others stabilizing, and several facing long-term decline
- Job seeker interest is shifting toward roles with faster hiring cycles and greater resilience
- Large employers continue to hire at scale, even as layoffs persist elsewhere
The 2026 Job Market Outlook identifies:
- 20 high-volume, high-growth job titles with sustained demand
- Industries expanding, stabilizing, or declining based on full-year trends
- The most searched jobs and fastest-growing search interest among candidates
- 25 employers hiring at scale throughout 2025
Snapshot: 20 High-Volume, High-Growth Jobs for 2026
These roles represent where demand remained strong and continued to grow despite economic uncertainty. They are based on the following criteria:
- High baseline job postings in 2024
- At least 10% year-over-year growth from 2024 to 2025
Healthcare and Behavioral Health
Clinical demand, patient care, and mental health services remain the strongest hiring engine.
Why this category matters: These roles continue to see strong growth due to staffing shortages, aging populations, expanded access to care, and increased focus on mental health and rehabilitation services.
Skilled Trades and Technical Services
Hands-on technical skills with strong replacement and maintenance demand.
Why this category matters: This list reflects roles meeting the specific volume-and-growth criteria, not the full universe of in-demand skilled trades. Employers continue to hire for roles that keep physical systems running. These jobs are less exposed to automation and benefit from consistent demand across industries.
Transportation, Logistics and Essential Services
In-person, credentialed roles that support supply chains and emergency response.
Why this category matters: Logistics and public service roles are seeing growth tied to supply chain resilience, infrastructure needs, e-commerce fulfillment, and public sector staffing.
Technology and Data
Targeted technical roles tied directly to quality, performance, and data infrastructure.
Why this category matters: While tech hiring overall has been uneven, employers continue to invest in roles that support product stability, data pipelines, and operational efficiency rather than speculative innovation.
Health, Wellness and Community Care
Preventative care, wellness services, and community-facing roles expand.
Why this category matters: Growth in these roles reflects increased attention to preventative care, wellness, and quality of life, alongside consumer willingness to invest in health-related services.
Healthcare continues to dominate hiring demand, but meaningful opportunity extends well beyond traditional clinical roles.
Growth is increasingly concentrated in practical, skill-based positions rather than purely aspirational career paths, reflecting employer demand for immediately applicable expertise.
Roles that require physical presence, formal certification, or hands-on experience continue to outperform, underscoring a sustained need for workers who can deliver impact from day one.
Snapshot: Industries Boom and Bust
Expansion Engines
Industries with sustained hiring momentum driven by long-term demand.
Key Expansion Industries
- Healthcare practitioners and technical: Ongoing staffing shortages, an aging population, and expanding care settings continue to drive strong demand across clinical roles.
- Community and social service: Rapid growth tied to mental health services, case management, housing support, and social programs addressing community needs.
- Architecture and engineering: Infrastructure modernization, facilities investment, and energy-related projects support continued hiring.
- Life, physical and social sciences: Growth concentrated in specialized research, compliance, healthcare-adjacent, and environmental roles.
What this means for job seekers: Skills shortages persist, credentialed candidates move faster, and employers compete more aggressively for talent.
Stable but Slowing
Industries still hiring, but at a more selective pace.
Key Stable Industries
- Sales and related occupations: Revenue roles remain funded, but headcount expansion is cautious and performance-driven.
- Computer and mathematical: Demand continues for critical skills, but hiring has normalized after years of rapid expansion.
- Installation, maintenance and repair: Replacement hiring and steady demand persist, though growth is incremental.
- Construction and extraction: Infrastructure spending supports hiring, but financing conditions and labor constraints limit acceleration.
What this means for job seekers: Competition is higher, requirements are more specific, and demonstrating measurable impact matters more than titles.
Structural Decline
Industries facing long-term contraction due to systemic shifts.
Key Declining Industries
- Office and administrative support: Automation, AI tools, and workflow consolidation continue to reduce demand.
- Education and library: Enrollment pressures, budget constraints, and staffing model changes weigh on hiring.
- Production: Efficiency gains and automation offset reshoring-related job creation.
- Arts, media and creative roles: Platform consolidation, AI adoption, and revenue model shifts reshape hiring needs.
What this means for job seekers: Career pivots, reskilling, and adjacent-role transitions are increasingly important for long-term stability.
Snapshot: Most Searched For Job Titles
From a pure volume standpoint, Monster job seekers in 2025 gravitated toward a familiar mix of “always-hiring” roles and fast-growing, in-demand fields, led by frontline service and operations jobs alongside data and analytics positions.
- Customer service representative
- Data engineer
- Administrative assistant
- Data analyst
- Warehouse worker
While these roles dominated by scale, the largest year-over-year increases reflected growing interest in jobs tied to specific skills, credentials, or hands-on work, particularly in healthcare, transportation, and logistics.
- Registered nurse
- CDL driver
- CNA (certified nursing assistant)
- Machine learning engineer
- Delivery driver
Snapshot: 25 Employers Hiring at Scale
This list reflects the employers that appeared most frequently in Monster job postings over the course of 2025, based on internal posting volume across the year and growth compared to 2024. While some of these companies have had layoffs, they still post at scale.
Because posting patterns can vary by role type, geography, and recruiting approach, the list is best viewed as a directional look at hiring visibility within the Monster marketplace.
- TravelNurseSource — Healthcare staffing (travel nursing)
- Uber — Gig economy / transportation
- Yale New Haven Health — Healthcare provider (hospital system)
- Vetted Health — Healthcare staffing
- Headway — Mental health / healthcare platform
- Advocate Aurora — Healthcare provider (hospital system)
- Capital One Financial Corporation — Financial services
- AlliedTravelCareers — Healthcare staffing (allied health)
- Thriveworks — Mental health services
- DoorDash — Gig economy / delivery
- Guitar Center, Inc. — Retail
- Fusion Medical Staffing, Inc. — Healthcare staffing
- GPAC — Recruiting / staffing
- Dish — Telecom / media
- Uline, Inc. — Distribution / logistics
- Teleperformance–TurboTax — Customer support / BPO
- Oracle Corporation — Technology / software
- Intuit Inc. — Fintech / software
- Walmart — Retail
- Copilot Careers — Education staffing / substitutes
- CB Richard Ellis Group, Inc. (CBRE) — Real estate services
- Allied Universal — Security services
- Dollar General Corporation — Retail
- AutoZone, Inc. — Retail / automotive
- Frito-Lay, Inc. — Consumer goods / manufacturing
Why This Matters Going Into 2026
The 2026 labor market is defined less by broad growth or decline and more by divergence. Hiring demand is concentrating in sectors tied to essential services, public investment, and specialized skills, while other areas continue to slow or undergo structural change.
For job seekers, understanding where demand is structurally supported, rather than temporarily elevated, can mean the difference between chasing openings and building a resilient career path. For employers, these patterns signal where competition for talent will intensify and where workforce strategies may need to adapt.
Healthcare remains the strongest hiring engine, but opportunity extends well beyond traditional clinical roles. Skilled trades, logistics, and community-facing positions continue to outperform because they address persistent, real-world needs that cannot be easily automated or postponed.
Even within technology, demand is shifting toward infrastructure, operations, and stability rather than speculative expansion.
The takeaway for job seekers is practical: roles that require credentials, hands-on expertise, or specialized skills continue to offer faster hiring cycles and greater resilience. Aligning career decisions with where demand is durable, not just visible, will be critical in navigating the job market in 2026.
Methodology
Monster’s 2026 Job Market Outlook is based on analysis of full-year 2025 job posting and job seeker search data from the Monster platform. The report highlights job titles with both high posting volume and sustained year-over-year growth, focusing on roles where employer demand has proven durable rather than short-term or niche spikes.
Industry trends were identified by examining changes in posting volume across major sectors and grouping them based on whether hiring is expanding, stabilizing, or declining.
Job seeker interest was assessed using search activity to understand how worker behavior aligns with employer demand.
Employers hiring at scale were identified based on consistent, high-volume job posting activity throughout the year. Findings are directional and intended to reflect hiring patterns within the Monster marketplace.
