Dive Brief:
- Despite 2025’s softer labor market, recruiters saw a sharp increase in cost-per-application and cost-per-hire, according to the Recruitment Marketing Benchmark Report, released Feb. 17 from recruitment marketing platform Appcast.
- Candidate apply rates stayed high, the report indicated. In particular, apply rates for office roles rose significantly, per the report, while frontline “standing-up” roles, namely in healthcare, were expensive and difficult to fill.
- Remote jobs began to lose footing following what the report called “years of outperforming in-person roles,” partly due to shifting candidate expectations.
Dive Insight:
The 2026 Appcast report, which drew on more than 302 million clicks, 27 million applications and data from nearly 1,200 employers, attributed rising cost-per-application and cost-per-hire rates to “shifts in job board pricing and programmatic media models.” It also said that high apply rates were driven by increased job seeker volume as well as more efficient recruitment marketing strategies.
“Fast-growing Sun Belt states delivered stronger apply rates and lower CPAs, while older and more rural states continued to generate the highest recruitment advertising costs,” the release said.
A recent report from Monster found that 77% of U.S. candidates were concerned that their resumes would be filtered out before reaching a human reviewer, which has led to longer resumes and less resume tailoring — and more work for recruiters.
Job seekers may also be responding to an uncertain market. The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 4.3% in January, with total nonfarm payroll up by 130,000 jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, at the same time the Employment Situation report for the whole of 2025 was revised down to 181,000 jobs gained, which represented the lowest pace of jobs growth since the height of the pandemic, according to a Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor’s chief economist.