Few employers plan to increase hiring in the second half of 2025

We’re approaching the hottest months of the year, yet employers’ hiring plans are experiencing a deep freeze.

Late last year, an HR Brew survey found that HR pros planned to hire fewer workers in the early months of 2025 compared to 2024. Now, based on a new survey of 336 HR Brew readers, those plans remain unchanged for the rest of the year, largely due to economic headwinds prompting continued uncertainty.

Stalled. Around 50% of respondents to HR Brew’s survey say they plan to hire about the same amount of people in the second half of 2025 as they did in the first half. Another 26% will hire fewer workers, while just 21% plan to hire more (4% were unsure).

When comparing hiring plans year over year, the hiring cooldown becomes more notable:

When asked what’s driving changes in hiring plans for this period, employers planning to hire fewer workers primarily pointed to economic uncertainty (64%), followed by budget changes (56%), industry slowdown (35%), changes in organizational priorities (34%), and tariff policy (27%).

Smaller businesses, with less than 100 employees, have a notably less optimistic hiring outlook compared to larger employers. Smaller employers, for instance, reported an 8% increase in planning to make no hires between the second half of 2024 and the same period in 2025. Meanwhile, enterprise employers with 1,000 or more employees plan to make at least one hire in this period, mirroring the second half of 2024. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of the latter plan to hire 100 or more workers through the rest of the year.

Zoom in. Healthcare and health services, which has outpaced employment in other sectors, is the industry surveyed expecting the largest uptick in hiring for later this year, with 30% saying they plan to hire more workers. Around 57% of respondents in this sector said their hiring plans remain unchanged from the first part of the year, and just 13% said they plan to hire less.

Meanwhile, respondents in government and nonprofits were the least likely of those surveyed to hire more workers in the second half of 2025. Around 34% of respondents in this sector said they plan to hire fewer people in the latter half of this year, while 56% said their hiring would stay the same, and only 6% plan to increase hiring.

Federal government employment took a hit in early 2025 as the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency task force cut thousands of federal positions and extended a hiring freeze first implemented in January to mid-July. Nonprofits, meanwhile, have suffered from federal funding cuts as well as a broader decline in charitable giving.

Operations and logistics roles made up the bulk of positions that respondents plan to hire for in late 2025, at 40%. That’s followed by sales and business development roles (34%), engineering and IT (33%), and customer support and success (31%).

When asked what challenges they anticipate with recruitment in the latter half of this year, candidates expecting higher pay or better perks was the top issue, selected by 47% of respondents. Another 42% anticipate getting fewer qualified candidates, 39% cited limited hiring budgets or headcount approvals, and 36% said balancing speed with the quality of hires would be a significant issue.