HireRight’s 2025 Global Benchmark Report uncovers surprising new insights into workforce recruitment and retention challenges

HireRight, a leading provider of global background screening services and workforce management solutions, recently released its 2025 Global Benchmark Report. The report is based on insights from more than 1,000 human resource, risk, and talent acquisition professionals worldwide who took part in the company’s 18th annual benchmarking survey earlier this year. It identifies key regional and global trends in background screening, talent acquisition, and workforce management, including insights into the impact the current economic landscape is having on hiring trends.

Global market fluctuations and uncertainties have plagued the job market for some time, resulting in companies being hesitant to hire more workers, despite potentially increased demands on their businesses. HireRight’s report has revealed that only three in 10 global respondents expected that turbulent market/economic conditions would have no impact on their hiring activity. These numbers were collected prior to recent U.S. policy shifts that incorporated new tariffs, which have the potential to cause further concerns about companies’ profitability and ability to hire new workers. When looking at the survey responses by company size, there was no significant difference between those provided by small to medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, suggesting that any instability is a factor that could impact hiring and growth at companies of all sizes.

The report also revealed that while hiring dropped slightly in North America and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) over the past year, it dropped to half the previous figure in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. Despite the competitive landscape for job seekers globally, this year’s survey findings discovered that the top recruitment challenge in 2024 was candidates dropping out if remote work wasn’t offered, despite the lower availability of jobs worldwide. While this issue was identified as affecting around three in 10 employers in North America, a notable increase was seen among EMEA and APAC respondents, especially in EMEA, where reports of this challenge doubled compared to last year’s survey findings. This suggests that companies that are not (or are no longer) embracing remote work may be missing out on some of the best available talent.

“As economic forecasts for 2025 continue to fluctuate, the findings in HireRight’s 2025 Global Benchmark Report give an insight into how hiring trends may evolve based on the direction the market takes,” said Ann Losiewski, EVP, Americas. “Despite many companies restricting their current recruitment activity, it’s still essential to conduct a robust pre-employment screening on all new hires, from employees to contractors, to help mitigate the risk of a threat actor—or even just an unsuitable candidate—infiltrating their company, which can be costly to remedy.”

For more information on the impact of market conditions on hiring, and to download HireRight’s 2025 Global Benchmark Report, please visit www.hireright.com/Benchmark2025.

About HireRight

HireRight is a leading global provider of technology-driven workforce risk management and compliance solutions. We provide comprehensive background screening, verification, identification, monitoring, and drug and health screening services for approximately 34,000 customers around the globe. We offer our services via a global platform that tightly integrates into our customers’ human capital management systems, enabling highly effective and efficient workflows for workforce hiring, onboarding, and monitoring. In 2024, we screened more than 60 million job applicants, employees, and contractors for our customers and processed more than 120 million screens. For more information, visit www.hireright.com.

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“As economic forecasts for 2025 continue to fluctuate, the findings in HireRight’s 2025 Global Benchmark Report give an insight into how hiring trends may evolve based on the direction the market takes,” said Ann Losiewski, EVP, Americas.