Companies across the globe ramped up hiring in 2021 with hybrid/remote work/work-from-home (WFH) becoming mainstream. Technology, Retail, and Pharma saw significant increase in job postings and Travel & Tourism, Banking & Payments emerged as high growth sectors. Companies accelerated automation with themes such as digitalization, blockchain, and industrial automation seeing more jobs as compared to previous year. Hiring talent became increasingly difficult as days to close jobs increased. Companies offered incentives such as sign-on bonuses to attract talent, finds GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

GlobalData’s ‘Global Hiring Report 2021 – Signals & Trends’ finds that the US had most active jobs coupled with healthy growth. Other key countries include the UK and India. The US headquartered companies posted most jobs in India (outside the US), followed by the UK, Canada and China.

The report also finds a strong correlation between the active jobs index and the official country employment data, an excellent signal for financial markets to pick early leads.

Rajeev Gupta, Director of Financial Markets Data at GlobalData, says: “Companies increased leadership hiring in 2021. While most listings were in the US, the UK along with markets such as Australia, France, and China also experienced an increase. Digitalization, ESG initiatives, and strategies such as direct-to-consumer (DTC) were some of the focus areas.”

New CXO job adverts rose significantly in 2021, with a 35% increase in the job postings. Chief Technology Officer (CTO) jobs were prominent across sectors such as Banking & Payments, Aerospace & Defense, Insurance, and Retail. Companies are increasingly looking for market and growth signals through Chief Data Officer (CDO) listings. New roles such as ‘Deals Forensic Services – Carbon Markets Director’ are expected to drive investments and create jobs.

Though job postings increased through the year, job closure duration increased as companies seem to struggle in closing positions, looking at a common talent pool. A key employment trend was that of hybrid/remote work/WFH becoming mainstream, for location agnostic employees. Additionally, job postings with sign-on bonuses increased since H2 2021 with incentives to attract new hires.

Gupta concludes: “Jobs not only provide conclusive evidence on companies’ strategic plans and product initiatives but can be imperative to generate hidden alpha and unearth macro insights on a near real-time basis.”