Job hunters were off to a bad start in 2026, with hiring rates dropping to pandemic-era lows. But looking ahead, U.S. businesses are poised to beef up their headcounts—and workers in HR, tech, and healthcare are most in demand.

Around two-thirds (66%) of U.S. employers plan to increase permanent hiring in the second half of this year, according to recent data from staffing firm Robert Half.

That’s up from 60% who said the same in the first half of this year, and an even bigger bump from the 57% one year ago. Plus, 56% of American employers say they’ll be adding contract talent to help unlock specialized skills that have been in short supply; nearly half have had to cancel projects due to a skills gap. They can no longer afford to hold out.

Michelle Reisdorf, district director at Robert Half, tells Fortune that employers seem to have reached a boiling point where waiting longer to hire “isn’t really an option” anymore. 

“They have business priorities to move forward,” she adds. “They’re not hiring just to add headcount, but they are willing to invest in talent for roles that directly support those goals.”

Technology (78%) workers top bosses’ lists of who they want to hire this year, followed by specialists in healthcare (75%), finance and accounting (74%), marketing and creative (65%), and legal (58%).

And despite some companies cutting back on support roles due to AI efficiencies, professionals in human resources (56%) and administrative and customer support (52%) are still highly in demand.

The top job specializations getting hired for the rest of 2026

• Technology (78%)
• Healthcare (75%)
• Finance and accounting (74%)
• Marketing and creative (65%)
• Legal (58%)
• Human resources (56%)
• Administration and customer support (52%)

As employers look to backfill internal staff and bring on new experts within their fields to keep critical projects moving forward, they say the hardest skills to find are industry-specific knowledge (47%), software proficiency (42%), and leadership abilities (40%).

Job-seekers are going through it: ‘The current job market isn’t working for them’

Americans have been up against a tough job market. In June, U.S. employers pulled back and added only 57,000 open roles—less than half the previous month’s total—amid uncertainty about the economy.

And this year’s hiring slowdown comes right after a staggering 1.2 million job cuts were announced last year, up 58% from the roughly 760,000 layoffs in 2024, according to a 2026 report from employment consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas. In fact, 2025 had the highest level of workforce reductions since 2020, and was neck-and-neck with the 2008 financial crisis, when 1.22 million roles were slashed.

The state of the job market has shattered the confidence of American workers. The average perceived probability of finding a job if one’s current role was lost fell to 43.1% in December 2025, a 4.2% drop from the year before, according to 2026 data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It’s a record low since the surveys started tracking the data back in 2013. And unsurprisingly, vulnerable groups of Americans are driving the rock-bottom expectations. Workers earning less than six figures, those without college diplomas, and perhaps surprisingly, baby boomers over the age of 60—right on the edge of retirement—have the lowest confidence in the job hunt right now.

“Americans don’t feel like the current job market is working for them,” Daniel Zhao, chief economist at employment site Glassdoor, told Fortune earlier this year. “Workers on the lower end of the income spectrum or without a college degree are often more susceptible to the swings of the business cycle, so it’s natural for them to be more concerned about signs of an economic slowdown.”

Applying to jobs has also become a long-winded numbers game. According to a 2025 WSJ analysis, Gen Zers and millennials between the ages of 25 and 34 were typically unemployed for an average of 19 weeks (nearly five months), while Gen Xers and baby boomers ages 55 to 64 were unemployed for 26 weeks (over half a year). Among Gen Xers and baby boomers who experienced layoffs at least once, a whopping 24% were not able to find a new job. And even when older workers actually managed to score an opportunity, 11% were forced to take a pay cut.

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