Global Tech Hiring Stays Strong as U.S. Sees Q2 Improvement
5 min read
The latest Experis Tech Talent Outlook — drawing on employer sentiment data collected between January and early February 2026 — paints a picture of a global tech hiring market in sustained forward motion, even as the United States recovers from a period of moderation. Globally, tech employers report a Q2 2026 Net Employment Outlook (NEO) of 45%, up four points from the prior quarter and nine points year-over-year — the strongest indicator of how confidently the global market has shifted from the cautious retrenchment of 2023–2024 into deliberate, skills-focused hiring in 2026. The US, while recovering, trails this global average: a Q2 NEO of 41% represents an eight-point improvement from Q1 but remains five points below year-ago levels — a gap consistent with mature tech economies that have largely completed their post-2022 workforce rationalisation and are now hiring with more precision than volume.
One important methodological note: the Q2 data was collected before the geopolitical developments that began across the Middle East in late February 2026 — developments that, as covered extensively by technology and business media, directly impacted cloud infrastructure, energy markets, and investor confidence across multiple sectors. The findings reflect employer sentiment in a pre-disruption window and should be read with the understanding that subsequent events may have shifted hiring plans in some markets, particularly those with direct exposure to the Gulf region.
The Structural Shift: Precision Hiring Replaces Broad Expansion
The most important narrative emerging from the Experis data is not the headline NEO figure but the structural character of the hiring activity it represents. The 2021–2022 tech hiring surge was characterised by broad-based headcount expansion — organisations hired at volume across engineering, product, and technical operations, often in anticipation of growth trajectories that proved optimistic. The correction that followed was sharp, particularly in the US, where large-scale layoffs across major technology companies dominated the hiring conversation through most of 2023 and 2024.
What the Q2 2026 data describes is a fundamentally different mode of hiring — precision hiring that prioritises specific, hard-to-find capabilities over broad workforce expansion. This explains why employer confidence can be rising while skills shortages simultaneously remain acute: organisations are hiring, but they are hiring for a narrower set of capabilities — particularly AI, cloud and data engineering, and the human skills that determine whether technical capabilities actually translate into business outcomes — and those capabilities remain scarce relative to demand regardless of the overall hiring volume.
"Across the global tech economy, demand for specialized talent remains high, but the nature of hiring has fundamentally changed. Employers are moving away from broad-based expansion and toward a more deliberate, skills-first approach. In the U.S., the quarter-over-quarter improvement suggests stabilization, while organizations continue focusing on securing specialized expertise, particularly in AI, and strengthening the human capabilities that support long-term business performance."
— Kye Mitchell, President, Experis U.S.
Skills Shortages Persist: AI and Human Capabilities Lead the Gap
Despite the positive NEO trajectory, talent scarcity remains a structural constraint on tech hiring globally. 73% of tech employers globally report difficulty finding the skilled talent they need — a marginal improvement from 76% a year ago, but still an overwhelming majority facing supply-side constraint. In the US, 74% of tech employers report challenges filling tech roles. The most acute gaps sit in two categories that reveal the dual nature of what modern tech organisations actually require: artificial intelligence capabilities — the technical depth to build, deploy, and maintain AI systems — alongside core human skills including professionalism, work ethic, collaboration, and adaptability.
The combination of AI technical scarcity and human skills shortages in the same list is worth noting explicitly: it reflects the reality that AI deployment in enterprise settings requires not just the engineer who can build the model, but the professional who can translate its outputs into business decisions, communicate change to non-technical stakeholders, and navigate the organisational dynamics of deploying technology that affects existing roles and workflows. Hiring for AI capability without simultaneously investing in the human skills layer that makes AI adoption successful is a common failure mode that the Experis data implicitly flags.
How Employers Are Responding: Workforce Strategies for a Tight Talent Market
Faced with persistent skills shortages, both global and US tech employers are adopting multi-track strategies that reflect the range of levers available when external hiring is constrained. Globally, the top five responses are upskilling and reskilling current employees (30%), offering more work location flexibility (24%), increasing wages (22%), targeting new and underrepresented talent pools (22%), and offering more schedule flexibility (21%). US employers show a notably higher emphasis on wage increases (28%) and targeting underrepresented talent pools (28%) — both at parity with upskilling — and a meaningful share reporting AI or automation as a strategy to reduce staffing needs (22%). The last finding is commercially significant: for a growing proportion of US tech employers, AI adoption and hiring are no longer complementary activities but alternatives — a signal that the relationship between AI capability investment and headcount planning is becoming structural rather than cyclical.
Regional Breakdown: Where Tech Hiring Confidence Is Highest
The regional picture from the Q2 data is one of striking divergence — between high-growth emerging tech markets and more established tech economies where precision hiring has replaced volume expansion:
- Asia Pacific leads globally — India reports the strongest NEO worldwide at 69%, reflecting robust demand driven by AI and digital transformation talent across both domestic and export-oriented technology services. Vietnam enters the survey for the first time this quarter at 49%, signalling its emergence as a meaningful tech hiring market. Australia, at 37%, reflects more moderate intentions within an otherwise strong region.
- The Americas show broad-based improvement — Brazil leads with an NEO of 63%, followed by Panama (61%) and Canada (45%). Colombia at 13% underscores the uneven pace of tech hiring recovery across Latin America, where infrastructure, investment, and talent development conditions vary significantly by country.
- Europe and the Middle East present a mixed picture — The United Arab Emirates leads the region at 69%, a figure that predates the late February geopolitical disruption and which may be subject to revision as employers reassess Gulf market risk. Portugal (50%) and the Netherlands (48%) perform well within Europe. At the other end, Romania (3%) and Switzerland (8%) report the weakest outlooks globally, reflecting continued economic caution in parts of Central and Eastern Europe.
For talent professionals and hiring leaders, the report's consistent message is that the window of opportunity is real but narrow for candidates with specialised AI, cloud, and data engineering credentials — and that organisations which have invested in internal upskilling are best positioned to fill the capability gaps that external hiring alone cannot close at acceptable cost and speed. Explore the latest HRTech Articles for the latest tech trends in human resources technology.
Key Takeaways
- Global tech employers report a Q2 2026 Net Employment Outlook of 45% — up 4 points quarter-on-quarter and 9 points year-over-year — reflecting sustained demand for specialised tech talent across a broad range of markets.
- US tech hiring is stabilising with a Q2 NEO of 41% — an 8-point improvement from Q1, though still 5 points below year-ago levels — as the market transitions from post-rationalisation caution to deliberate, skills-first precision hiring.
- 73% of tech employers globally and 74% in the US report difficulty filling tech roles — with the most acute gaps in AI technical capabilities and core human skills including professionalism, collaboration, and adaptability.
- Upskilling and reskilling current employees is the top employer response globally (30%) and in the US (29%); 22% of US employers report using AI or automation as a strategy to reduce staffing needs — a signal that AI adoption and headcount planning are becoming structural alternatives, not just complements.
- India (69% NEO) and the UAE (69%) lead globally; Brazil (63%) and Panama (61%) lead the Americas; Romania (3%) and Switzerland (8%) are the weakest globally — with the UAE figure predating the late February geopolitical disruption that may have shifted employer sentiment in the Gulf region.