Last year, I wrote about what was driving the scarcity of jobs in talent acquisition.
Demand for TA professionals was being squeezed by three forces: the hangover from excesses of the COVID era, the corporate push for efficiency, and AI. These forces are also connected: the overexpansion of the COVID era led to the push for leaner teams, and AI gave those teams the ability to do more work with fewer people.
The official employment count for Human Resources Specialists declined in 2025 for the first time in the data series I reviewed. But the gap between current employment levels and the pre-COVID trendline is also narrowing. If the profession is simply reverting to that long-term trendline, the correction may be closer to the end than the beginning.
The big caveat is AI. If AI fundamentally changes the demand for recruiters, then the old trendline may no longer tell us where TA employment is headed.
Like last year, I am using the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Human Resources Specialists category as a stand-in for talent acquisition professionals. It includes other HR roles, so it is not a clean measure of recruiting employment. But it is the closest official proxy we have for talent acquisition careers, especially because BLS has separate categories for HR Managers, Training and Development Specialists, and Compensation and Benefits Specialists.
During the boom years for the recruiting profession, the number of Human Resources Specialists grew unusually fast. From 2020 to 2022, the category added 187,550 jobs, or 13.6% annually, which was far above pre-COVID norms.
That growth was unsustainable, and for the last two years we’ve seen the growth rate steadily decline.
In 2025, newly released BLS data shows, the number of Human Resources Specialists fell for the first time since the BLS began providing the data in 2012.
The decline was only 0.5%, or 5,030 jobs, but after several years in which TA professionals have experienced layoffs and a brutal job market, the official data is finally showing the weakness that has been obvious within the profession.
Is This the Beginning of TA Job Declines or the End?
For many TA professionals, this has been a brutal job market. But recruiting is cyclical, and demand for TA professionals has historically followed the broader hiring market. So where are we in this cycle of supply and demand?
A look at the historical data shows that the pre-COVID trendline is catching up to where we are now.
This is not happening because the TA market has recovered. Time is doing some of the work: the extraordinary COVID-era spike is flattening out, while the old trendline continues to move upward.
Why Things Feel So Bad Even With Only a Small Decline
Median wages for Human Resources Specialists grew by an inflation-adjusted 1.77%, a modest number, but still faster than overall wage growth.
So with only small declines in employment and better-than-average wage growth, why does the profession still feel so bad?
Careers are not just about how many people are employed. They are about movement.
When teams are growing, opportunities multiply. Recruiters move into senior roles. Coordinators get promoted. Managers open new seats. People who lose jobs can often find another company that is still building.
When growth stops, everything tightens.
A flat or slightly declining market can feel brutal if fewer roles are being posted, and every open job attracts a deep pool of experienced TA professionals.
AI: Still the Elephant in the Room
The optimistic conclusion here is that we are now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for this correction. If the long-term trendline is still valid, then the gap between where the profession is and where it “should” be is getting smaller.
The caution is that the old trendline may not hold.
Last year, I wrote that AI was the structural wild card. I still think that is the case. AI has not replaced recruiters in the simplistic way that some predicted, but it is changing the recruiting profession from top to bottom.
Companies now have more tools for sourcing, screening, scheduling, writing, outreach, analytics, and workflow automation. Some of those tools are overhyped. Some create real risk. But they make it easier for companies to imagine a lighter recruiting function with fewer employees than were previously necessary.
Are we seeing a normal reversion to the pre-COVID trendline? Or are we seeing the beginning of a lower trendline for TA employment because new technologies are permanently reducing demand for traditional recruiting roles?
For now, the data suggests that the COVID-era correction may be getting closer to its end, unless AI is fundamentally changing the baseline for how many recruiters companies need.
