What’s Motivating Job Seekers and Why It’s Holding Them Back

Additional Resources

• Randstad Workmonitor 2026
• Indeed Workforce Insights Survey
• ADP NER Pulse

Transcript

Pete Newsome: 0:00

Welcome to Cornering the Job Market for Tuesday, January 20th. Today’s headlines include new workplace reports from Indeed and Randstad and the latest jobs data from ADP. Let’s jump right in. Indeed just published findings from their 2025 Workforce Insights survey. Here’s what U.S. job seekers say is motivating them. 69% are looking for higher pay, and 49% are looking for better benefits. The benefits workers are looking for are practical health insurance and vacation days, those came in at the top, then paid sick days, flexible hours, retirement savings programs, and remote work. Now, even though flexible schedules are important to workers, it’s worth noting that employer hiring isn’t trending in that direction. As you can see here with the green line, U.S. postings on Indeed that mention flexible schedules rose from 7.1% in early 2020 to 14.4% in November 23, but they’ve stalled since. They’re only at 13.7, and that doesn’t seem to be moving. So employees really want flexible hours, but those opportunities just aren’t increasing. And then there’s AI.

1:10

The report shows that 40% of employed workers in the U.S. fall into what they call the disengaged category. It means they’re rarely using AI and they don’t feel the need for more training. But as you can see, other countries are doing significantly better in that area. This is disappointing because it means U.S. workers are falling behind, potentially really far behind. We should be ahead of this curve, but we just aren’t, not right now. And that is to the detriment of everyone individually. Don’t rely on your employer to give you guidance on this. Take advantage of using AI in your personal life and in your professional life. There are countless reasons for it. And for people who do use AI, 81 to 96% of users across all countries say that they’re saving at least one hour a day. And in the US, 32% of AI users say they use that time for improved work-life balance. We know employees want flexibility. We just talked about that. And what better way to get it than by having better work-life balance, getting more time back, and AI can absolutely provide that for you. So there’s every reason to do it. All the data supports it. Please pay attention to what is trending in this area.

2:24

AI isn’t just the future, it’s the now. So those are the highlights from this report. It’s a big one. It covers several areas that I won’t touch on right now, but if you want to check it out, you can find it at hiringlab.org. Now moving on to the next story. Randstad just published its Work Monitor 2026 report. What jumped out at me in this are several differences in perception between employers and workers. For example, 78% of employers say remote work has made collaboration more challenging. At the same time, 42% of workers say they wouldn’t consider accepting a new job if there wasn’t flexibility around the work location, and 42% wouldn’t accept a role without working hours flexibility. Based on the indeed data that was published today, we know job postings that offer flexibility are not on the rise and potentially on the decline. So if you’re a job seeker, that’s something you need to reconcile. If you’re insistent that that is a requirement, it’s definitely going to limit your job prospects. And that’s just not great when it’s in employer’s market. And we’re in an employer’s market. The job market is always about supply and demand. If you have a rare or unique skill set where there is more demand than supply, you can be very picky. But for most professions, especially right now, that’s just not the case. It’s important to be pragmatic about your value in the job market at any given time. I don’t mean your value as a person.

3:56

I don’t mean your value as a professional. I mean your value specifically as it relates to labor supply and demand. So if there are more job openings and there are people to fill the jobs, great. You can call your shots. But for a lot of people, that’s just not the case right now. And you’re really restricting your options if you’re insistent about working remotely or having an overly flexible schedule. So just it’s just something to be aware of and consider that if you’re having a difficult time in your job search. Also, in this report, 98% of employers say they’re confident that their business will grow this year. While only 55% of employees say the same. That is a huge gap. And as I’ve noticed repeatedly in this report, as I mentioned, there’s that’s a massive disconnect. Almost 100% of the companies in the survey feel good about their prospects this year. That’s great. But when only half of their employees do, that is a perception and communication problem. If there’s a good problem to have, I guess that’s one, it can be solved. If you’re an employer and you’re going to have a good year, make sure your team knows about it. That’s not hard and it is important because if they’re afraid the business is on the decline and you might have layoffs, well, they’re going to be much more inclined to jump ship. They’ll be looking for other opportunities. So solve that. This is a good uh, again, a good thing. Or you want to be able to give your employees good news.

5:24

So if you manage a team out there, handle that quickly. And this report touches on AI too, of course. U.S. workers currently aren’t convinced that it’s helping them individually. Only 53% feel it boosts their productivity, and approximately half believe AI adoption will benefit their company, but not them personally. Okay, it I’m sure will benefit the company. Why else would they be using AI or encouraging the use of AI? But it’s also going to benefit you personally, whether you see that benefit immediately or not. It will elevate your work, your productivity, your efficiency, and as much as anything else, if not the most important, it will make you more marketable. So don’t disregard that, please. I won’t get on that soapbox right now. I talk about it in almost every episode, but it’s because it’s that important. You need to be using AI, you need to be figuring out how to help, how, how to use it to make your work better in whatever it is you do. It applies to virtually all positions, so please don’t get left behind there. Today’s final headline is from ADP. Their NER Pulse report came out this morning. It shows that for the four weeks ending December 27th, private employers added an average of 8,000 jobs per week. That’s a slowdown, but of course it was a slowdown.

6:50

It was Christmas week. And we’re going to see a decline, probably a bigger one next in the next report, too, the one that comes out next week, because that’s New Year’s week. Hiring always slows down at the end of the year. That is just the way things go. Shouldn’t surprise anyone. So there’s not really a whole lot to learn from these numbers because those weeks are just so atypical from what we’ll see in January. So that data looks like we’ll have to wait another week for that to kick in. I’m expecting that to trend upward to a significant degree, and hopefully, hopefully, knock it on my desk here. That will continue as the year goes on. A little too early to call that shot, but we can hope. So those are your headlines for today. But before we close, here’s a fun fact, as always. Typewriters were designed with the QWERTY layout specifically to slow down typists, so mechanical arms wouldn’t jam. So QWERTY, of course, is Q W-E-R-T-Y. I think everyone who types is familiar with that. I don’t think I’ve ever said it out loud before, but this is a surprise to me. I assumed, clearly incorrectly, that the keyboard layout was to help people type faster, that it was for a functional reason in a good way not to avoid breaking typewriters. So I certainly learned something from today’s fun fact. Hopefully you did too. Thank you for listening. I look forward to talking to you tomorrow. Please like, subscribe, and share with anyone who you think might be interested. Talk soon.